Nabila Ernada is an Indonesian design researcher and media artist. Trained as a communications specialist and social strategist in ID <love>, she earned a BA in Media Studies from Universitas Indonesia (ID) and later an MA in Social Design from Design Academy Eindhoven (NL). Her work explores the in-between zones of surveillance and resistance, tracing how media infrastructures govern visibility, legality, and the body, particularly within Indonesian contexts.
Exhibited at Its smells like sweat and jasmine, CBK Zuidoost (Sept 15-Nov15 2025) and (Re)defining Kartini (24 April 2025), Verzets Resistance Museum
Multimedia and scent installation, variable dimensions, 2024
This work explores the unsettling reality of buruh siluman—the
invisible labourers within Indonesia’s palm oil plantations. Drawing on
the research of Dr. Hariati Sinaga, it traces how women’s labour has
long been hidden, exploited, and erased, while making visible the ghosts
that continue to haunt these landscapes.
The exploration of the archive reveals longstanding practices of labour exploitation in Indonesia—the cost of colonial expansion borne through the dehumanisation of plantation workers. It also traces the intersections of gendered and economic exploitation that emerged with the rise of colonial industry. As a homage to the lost and invisible women conscripted into specific tasks and classifications of labour, this work highlights both those working in the fields and those confined to colonists’ homes. On these plantations, women served as physical labourers, picking palm fruit for meagre (and at times nonexistent) wages, but also as nyais (indentured housekeepers) subjected to sexual exploitation by their “employers.” The images, sourced from the KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) archive, are re-edited and combined with contemporary visualisations—making visible how colonial records themselves often erased these women. The ghosts they left behind continue to haunt the palm oil fields today, where the same systems of labour still exploit women workers.
The Melati flower, or jasmine, carries a dual meaning: its fragrance evokes otherworldly spirits, echoing the spectral existence of the buruh siluman, while its use as a pseudonym for sexual assault victims in media underscores the vulnerabilities hidden within these plantations.
The exploration of the archive reveals longstanding practices of labour exploitation in Indonesia—the cost of colonial expansion borne through the dehumanisation of plantation workers. It also traces the intersections of gendered and economic exploitation that emerged with the rise of colonial industry. As a homage to the lost and invisible women conscripted into specific tasks and classifications of labour, this work highlights both those working in the fields and those confined to colonists’ homes. On these plantations, women served as physical labourers, picking palm fruit for meagre (and at times nonexistent) wages, but also as nyais (indentured housekeepers) subjected to sexual exploitation by their “employers.” The images, sourced from the KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) archive, are re-edited and combined with contemporary visualisations—making visible how colonial records themselves often erased these women. The ghosts they left behind continue to haunt the palm oil fields today, where the same systems of labour still exploit women workers.
The Melati flower, or jasmine, carries a dual meaning: its fragrance evokes otherworldly spirits, echoing the spectral existence of the buruh siluman, while its use as a pseudonym for sexual assault victims in media underscores the vulnerabilities hidden within these plantations.