The Chittagong Hill Tracts in south-eastern Bangladesh are home to 11 different Jumma, or indigenous peoples. Their connection to their lands, as guardians of the natural environment, is the focus of Joydeb Roaja’s practice. Roaja belongs to the Tripura community and is one of the area’s most prominent artists. His work is dominated by distinctive figurative paintings and a multidisciplinary practice that continues to intersect with his practice as a performance artist. He has become a powerful and poetic voice expressing his peoples’ symbiotic relationships to nature and the fraught history of land and human rights in the region.

‘The future of indigenous peoples’ 2024 series, featured in the Asia Pacific Triennial, addresses indigenous people’s eviction from traditional lands and the entailing loss of villages and culture, and is particularly inspired by Roaja’s witnessing of non-indigenous people filming and interrupting traditional ceremonial practices.