Fujio Emura and Daisy Orlana came to their photo project, Fujio Sayang, naturally. The pair met at Sayang, Orlana’s pop-up Indonesian dinners, and decided to create a series combining some of their passions—food, photography, and their shared Indonesian culture. 

“Durian” (2020). Image courtesy of Fujio Sayang.

“We always feel so sentimental about the memory of food and Indonesian culture specifically. We’ve talked about working on something together and in this case, because Fujio is a photographer, we came up with the idea to celebrate Indonesian ingredients,” Orlana, the founder and creative director of Sayang, said. “[These are things that] I would say we’re more familiar with but potentially other people aren’t really because they’re not so aware of Indonesian food. We really just wanted to take ownership of images, and being able to curate them in our perspective was really important.”

Both Emura and Orlana have found the more common representations of their culture to be one-sided. “Indonesia is more than just Bali,” they joke. The project was intended to steer away from the rattan and batik fabrics that are usually seen surrounding these types of foods, and focus on a more Javanese (Java is one of the largest islands in Indonesia’s archipelago) style that they are both more drawn to.

“Tempeh” (2020). Image courtesy of Fujio Sayang.

“As a medium I thought that the process was really fun. I’d never used tweezers and secret strings to hang stuff,” Orlana said. Emura, the photographer and art director for the project, says that they followed a fairly traditional making process. 

“Fish and Lime” (2020). Image courtesy of Fujio Sayang.

“[It] involves thinking, planning, and then executing. The thinking part was just bouncing off ideas to each other about what ingredients or dishes felt close to our heart. I was in Indonesia last year, and I think Daisy was also there the year before, so we were just collecting memories and specific things that were unique to our country,” Emura said. 

“Palm Sugar” (2020). Image courtesy of Fujio Sayang.

The prints feature bold representations of foods like tempeh, palm sugar, durian, and turmeric. They are on sale at fujiosayang.net, with all profits benefiting The Okra Project and Bentara Papua, until Friday, August 8th.