Amanda Tjhin

Biography

Amanda Tjhin is a filmmaker, photographer, and artistic researcher whose work focuses on experimental narrative and documentary filmmaking. Her work, rooted in movement, identity, and space, explores the fluid nature of belonging while navigating the intersections of queerness and her personal history. Her visual endeavors uncover the hidden meanings of everyday life, forming poetic reflections and abstractions on how people are shaped by their environments. As she is deeply inspired by the phrase, “bertukar pikiran,” an Indonesian phrase that directly translates to “exchange of minds,” Amanda treats conversations, collaborations, and shared experiences as essential to her creative process. Through layered imagery and the bending of fiction and reality, Amanda aims to dissect and critique heteronormative structures and bring new perspectives into light through filmmaking. As a queer POC artist who has lived across Indonesia, the United States, and the Netherlands, Amanda uses nomadic ventures and connections as tools of participation and collaboration, offering constant invitations to reimagine and reconnect with the world. Amanda’s work interweaves an ongoing dialogue: one that seeks to transgress the unseen narratives woven into the spaces we move through.