Park Nights 2021: aga ujma

For Park Nights 2021, Serpentine presented an evening of performance with multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and composer, aga ujma.

For Park Nights 2021, multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and composer, aga ujma, presented a new performance titled ‘sun was glazed in rainbow’ based on personal stories, poems, traditional Indonesian musical pieces, and compositions inspired by the Serpentine Pavilion and its character. Conceived as a transformative movement across two chapters, the performance shifted from an intimate solo set written for sasando, an Indonesian 32-strings bamboo zither and harp, to a more expanded Javanese ensemble of intricate gamelan instruments, including bronze xylophones, gongs, rebab – a bowed fiddle – and other various traditional and non-traditional percussion instruments.

Based in London, aga ujma was recently signed to Slow Dance label and announced her debut EP ‘songs of innocence and experience’ via CLASH Magazine. Using an experimental approach to singing and composing songs, ujma mixes her classical music upbringing and folk influences from Poland with traditional music studies at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, Central Java and SOAS University of London.