Leonard Suryajaya creates absurd and affectionate tableaus featuring his family, friend, and strangers. The results are photographs that are tender and critical, bound up with the struggles of familial authority and self identity. 

Suryajaya’s work is rooted in this upbringing as an Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent, as a Buddhist educated in Christian schools in a Muslim-majority country, and as someone who departed from his family and his culture’s definitions of love and family. Novi, Dear at Silver Eye Center for Photography, focuses on the artists relationship with his sister, November, and his immediate family who still lives in their hometown in Indonesia.