Episode 6: Diyan Achjadi

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Diyan Achjadi (they/she) is a Vancouver-based artist who explores the ways that surface ornamentation and illustrated printed matter can function as archives documenting the circulation of ideas in visual form. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, their formative years were spent moving between multiple educational, political, and cultural systems. Through drawing, printmaking and animation, they use modes of fiction and storytelling to examine interrelated and conflicting histories of place.

Achjadi is a Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art and currently serving as Interim Vice-President Academic at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. They received a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA from Concordia University. They have exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and beyond; recent exhibitions include Stories for Futures, Real and Imagined (2024); Godzilla: Echoes from the 1990s Asian American Arts Network (2024); “Between Line and Thread: Connecting the Asian American Arts Centre Collection”(2023), Carried Through The Water (2022). They were a recipient of the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation in 2021.