The tumor above my heart said to me, “You are not following your heart. Go and heal, so that one day you can.”

In 2021, I became ill: lymphoma. A fourteen-centimeter tumor. My body gave me a signal I could no longer ignore. I was not living from my heart.

That period forced me to stop and to listen. I left Amsterdam and returned to Oegstgeest, to my childhood home, to heal. Photography became my way of slowing down, of being present, and of connecting with what lives beneath the surface.

My work is deeply rooted in my personal history and my Moluccan heritage. I am a third-generation Moluccan. What moves me is not only what we have lived through, but what continues to echo through families, through the body, through silences, and through the values, pain and resilience that are passed down from generation to generation.

From that urgency emerged my mission and the photobook HATI | RUMAH TUA. HATI means heart. RUMAH TUA means ancestral home. My heart brought me back home to realign my direction. From that place, I portray third- and fourth-generation Moluccans and their families in their childhood homes. I do not work from the outside looking in, but from the heart, involved and connected. I walk alongside these families for a part of their journey, and they walk alongside mine.

The stories I make visible speak of ancestry, intergenerational trauma, resilience and connection. Of pain, healing and homecoming. By bringing these stories together, I aim to create space for recognition, softening and continuity. My work is my way of giving back to my community and to my ancestors, by making visible what has long been carried, but not always spoken.

My illness led me to a way of working that is intuitive and relational, attuned to the people I photograph and to what unfolds in the moment. Through slowness and meditation, a safe space emerges in which trust can grow. In that space, more happens than the making of a photograph; the creative process becomes a process of coming home, within myself.

My work does not seek definitive answers, but resonance.

Ale rasa beta rasa. What you feel, I feel too.