Badra Aji’s practice draws deeply from personal and collective memory, manifesting in works that blur the boundary between intimate and political, disrupting familiar interpretations, while asserting the significance of marginalised perspectives. Through a combination of figurative drawing, video, writing and photography, he constructs poetic semi-narratives employing a deliberate disjuncture between imagery and language. This intentional friction creates distance for the viewer, positioning them as both witness and outsider. Aji’s use of personal archives and historical paintings furthers this tension, embedding his work with layers of symbolism and gestures towards magical realism. Aji was awarded the Majlis Travelling Scholarship upon graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2016. He has received City of Melbourne Art Grants and a Creative Victoria’s Creative Project Fund. Aji was a finalist of the Paul Guest Drawing Prize in 2018 and a two-time finalist of the Dobell Drawing Prize. More recently, he was selected as a finalist for the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia.