Nilam Sari, is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Their research and art practice focus on grief and technology–specifically the way we grieve through technology, as well as the way we grieve the technology itself. By using woodworking and electronic arts as their primary mediums, they explore these topics by creating work ranging from sculptures, poetry, speculative designs, to robotic arts. Sari’s work engages in critical conversations on how we use technology–be it social media, virtual spaces, or video games–to grieve. They want it to challenge people’s perception of the life and death of technology, to acknowledge phenomena like how children have come to grieve their “dead” Tamagotchis, or how a group of elderly in Japan held funerals for their robot dogs. Sari strives to cultivate conversations about the autonomy technology has over our emotions and recognizing the human bias behind the programming through their practice.

Sari earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018 and has previously received an art fellowship with Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering and Hopkins Extreme Material Institute during their stay in Baltimore, MD, in the United States.

Memento Mori 2016—Red oak and white oak, steam bent