Alexandra Kumala tells stories of the untranslatable and the inexpressible. She is a recipient of the 2024 NYSCA Artists Grant, the 2023 Queens Arts Fund, and the 2022 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music & Theatre. She is one half of the team behind Sugar Nutmeg, the long-form podcast and platform focusing on Southeast Asia, named after the spices whose trade route shaped our world today.

Her films have received support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Queens Council on the Arts. Her writing has appeared in literary journals and anthology books about Southeast Asia, including “A History of Photography in Indonesia,” published by Amsterdam University Press and Afterhours Books, shortlisted for the Historical Book Award at the Book Awards of Les Rencontres d’Arles. Previously, she worked in theatre and translation, both of which influence her writing and filmmaking.

Alexandra spent half her life in Jakarta and half her life in New York City, with stints in Singapore, Seattle, Bellevue, Lima, and London in between. Being a minority in all the places she has ever called home deeply shapes her work as an artist. Today, she makes films and writes essays about untranslatability and the constant shifting of borders, identities, and power dynamics.