About this Event
The Plantation Persists: Elia Nurvista in conversation with Alaya Ang
5.30pm - 7pm Tuesday 24th November 2026
Reid Lecture Theatre
Free but ticketed - Book via Eventbrite
Join interdisciplinary artist Elia Nurvista and artist-curator Alaya Ang to consider how colonial systems persist in the present through contemporary agricultural practices.
Ang will open the event with a short discussion on curating the recent exhibition, , which featured Nurvista’s work, alongside that of artists Erika Tan and Gogularaajan Rajendran. Following this, Nurvista will share insights into practice examining the contemporary politics of plantation economies through the palm oil industry, connecting colonial agricultural systems to present-day forms of extraction, monoculture, and global capital. To end, Ang will join Nurvista in conversation to further consider how her research and artistic processes can bring attention to threatened landscapes and ecological concerns in Indonesia.
Elia Nurvista is an Indonesian artist and independent researcher based in Yogyakarta. Working across installation, film, performance, workshops, and collective research, her practice examines the politics of food and its entanglements with ecology, labor, colonial histories, and global capitalism. For over a decade, she has explored how food systems shape social and environmental relations, with a particular focus on plantation economies and the palm oil industry through her ongoing project Long Hanging Fruits. In 2015, she initiated Bakudapan Food Study Group, a collective dedicated to critical food studies.
Alaya Ang is an artist and independent curator based in Glasgow. Their practice spans sculpture and participatory approaches, bringing together research, artistic experimentation informed by Southeast Asian histories and cosmologies.Through their artistic and curatorial practice, Alaya continues to explore community-led ways of working, the conditions that enable experimentation, and how different forms of knowledge and experience can shape cultural spaces.
This event is part of the Race, Rights & Sovereignty ‘States of Matter’ strand. ‘States of Matter’ is a programme strand which considers interactions between art and statehood, asking how practitioners shift our present states of living. Race, Rights and Sovereignty is a programme supported by the GSA Students Association in partnership with GSA Exhibitions.
Image: Elia Nurvista, The Route (2025) © Alan Dimmick
Event venue & nearby stays
The Glasgow School of Art, 167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow, United Kingdom
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