TIME OF THE RIVERS:
Artist Fellowship
Borneo Bengkel and Radical Ecology are delighted to announce Time of the Rivers, an artist Fellowship programme commissioned by the British Council.
​
Running from April to September 2025, the Fellowship is part of Human-Nature, the British Council’s 3-year programme in Malaysia exploring the role of the arts and creative approaches to highlight climate adaptation.
The Fellowship engages four artists from Malaysia and the UK to explore climate adaptation, decolonial approaches to art and ecology, and socio-political impacts on displaced communities.
​
Fellowship Overview
The Fellowship builds on ongoing research and community engagement by Radical Ecology and Borneo Bengkel, focusing on the ecological and social impacts of major dam projects such as Bengoh (Sarawak, 2010s) and Burrator (Dartmoor, 1890s). It centres the lives of displaced communities and historic legacies of dispossession, questioning how the extractive dynamics of economic development are also reflected in dominant approaches to heritage and culture that continue to connect the UK and Borneo to this day. In response to these issues and the projected impacts of global warming, the project also considers the reparative and emancipatory potential of artistic strategies that reconnect us with the time and flow of our river ecologies.
​
Fellowship Components
​
-
Online Mentoring Sessions (April-May): to deepen decolonial approaches to art and ecology.
-
Field Visits (June-July): two immersive 2-week field visits in Borneo and the UK.
-
Online Showcase (September): present research findings and proposals for new works that will emerge through the 6-month programme.
Meet the Fellows
Click / tap on the images for more info.
Ben Swaby Selig
UNITED KINGDOM
Kedisha Coakley
UNITED KINGDOM
Rizo Leong
MALAYSIA
Syarifah Nadhirah
MALAYSIA
Meet the Mentors
Click / tap on the images for more info.
Celine Lim
MALAYSIA
Emma Nicolson
UNITED KINGDOM
Françoise Vergès
FRANCE
June Rubis
MALAYSIA
Meet the Team
Borneo Bengkel
​
Founded in 2017, Borneo Bengkel is a pan-Borneo platform that seeks to highlight the island's creative communities. Through the lens of arts and culture, Borneo Bengkel engages creatives of all disciplines as well as researchers and community workers, providing opportunities for organic connections and sustainable partnerships.
​
With collaborations throughout Borneo- Sarawak, Sabah, Kalimantan and Brunei- we have hosted, curated and facilitated residencies, exhibitions, workshops and dialogue sessions.
‘Bengkel’ means 'workshop' in the Malay language, and it reflects Borneo Bengkel’s focus on knowledge exchange, mutual understanding, and collaboration.
​
​
Radical Ecology
​
Radical Ecology works across art, research, and policy to advance environmental justice.
We collaborate with leading artists, climate scientists, policy-makers, grassroots activists, cultural institutions and research centres to deliver critical interventions and public art projects, nurturing imagination where it is most needed and building community for change.
Radical Ecology operates at different scales and in diverse contexts, to create opportunity, community and relationship to the landscape and to nurture “planetary imagination” – a creative force and form of transformative agency that can translate across silos of racial identity and into the heart of our political ecology.