Priyageetha Dia's Digital Animations Explore Resistance and Colonial Histories

Singaporean artist Priyageetha Dia creates digital animations and installations that explore resistance, labor, and colonial histories. Her video "Night Shift" (2025) depicts a woman dancing under a strobe light, made using MetaHuman software, connecting rave dancing to labor. "kokki" (2025) examines meat hooks and kavadi structures used in Thaipusam rituals, touching on restrictions faced by Tamil Hindus in Singapore. Dia's earlier works like "Golden Staircase" (2017) and "Absent – Present" (2018) involved gold leaf interventions in public housing, removed by authorities. During the pandemic, she learned Blender and Unreal Engine, producing "The Sea is a Blue Memory" (2022) about indentured laborers' sea journeys. "LAMENT H.E.A.T" (2023) mourns rubber plantation exploitation, featuring AI-generated oppāri deathsong. "Sap Sonic" (2023) translates archival photos from the Sumatra Caoutchouc Company into ambient sound. Her latest work "litany for a failing machine" (2026), a sound installation at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, uses a cloned Greta Thunberg voice to critique tech capitalism and Christian eschatology, inspired by Peter Thiel. Dia's solo exhibition "salt" is at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, through 8 August.