Photo documentation credit to ; Ruvindu , Chinthaka thenuwara and Lojithan Ram ,Venue : COCA symbiosis , Colombo , KAL Project and Goethe Institue.
At the emergence of a new era ,coined as “new reality”; civilizations have come to a verge of a halt, to reimagine a world after post humanity. At a rapid speed de territorialization occurring in close proximities in our surroundings. Actions of conservation, accumulation of history and memory are now part of Arche’s embodiment. Predominantly arises as a new discourse or new necessity for Utopian envisioning.
Anthropocene doesn’t addresses the demeanor of the past and the present anymore, but moved towards creating a discourse on unforeseen future/futurism . Temporalities of cultural histories, inheritance, heritage, communities, identities which are at vulnerable or marginalized positions are directly been subjected/ affected by these rapid changes. Landscapes, objects, debris traces these temporalities, seizing a momentary repulsion to the forgetfulness and annihilation of these spaces and civilizations.
My new project takes its locus on the recent demolishing of heritage building De Soysa ,situated at Malay Street in slave island.
Built in the late 1870s by the famed philanthropist Charles Henry de Soysa (the wealthiest Ceylonese of the 19th century), the De Soysa building is a heritage structure that used to function as a two-store block for commercial shophouses. Even though the architectural formation show cases reminiscence of Victorian modules , the structure was never built by a local businessmen . There is slight linear tilting within its architecture, constructed according to the positioning of the justice Akbar road which runs alongside the building.
De Soysa building located within a topographical space actively been subjugated to assertions of baseline syndrome. Development plans in process of gentrification , rapid alterations, succumbed by the capitalocene( a pervasive human influence over non human). State amidst these occurrences poignantly camouflage their agendas masking and propagating nationalistic upheavals. Further expanding disparities among communities .(majority and minority ethnographic groups)
Racial Capitalocene, an expansion from the basis of Anthropocene discourse; asserting new frame works on hybridization of socio environmental ,eco-political , to ontological existence of identity and geology as entangled subjectivities. Racial capitalocene demands further assertions to discuss on disparities within structures of culture , geology and history in one phenomena.
Through De Soysa as an existing symbolic motif we hence focus on the occurrence of chrono phage (Greek term for time eater) conditioning onto its trajectory of being a nonexistence looming shadow. An occurrence coined under the situation of amnesiac principles, actions which effects forgetting: while assimilating archives. The existence of the building’s architecture, communities inhabited, its inheritance, past histories gradually succumbed into amnesiac existence. Creating hollow fragments, sinkholes which are coined as ghost archives within the Arche. Memorials, archives, interlaces as symbolic gestures within the play of forgetting , sanitization.
Unfolding from the remains or debris, archaic narratives are to create an intact symbolical interface of how De Soysa as a monument carries its presence to the future. Its physical absence traces of the community, heritage are encountered from its fragmented existence. Unfolded through the debris , materials collected , which contains its humanistic entanglements , with time encompassed within the materiality of the sediments. These fragmented debris questions the myth and fixative underpinning of what is heritage ?, but creates a revelation to the trajectories of what is to become our utopian concept of futurism.
Creating a symbolic engagement with the dead materials of the archives and with the audience that re-interconnects the pastness, present and future promise of its existence. It is not mere encountering of preserving a nostalgia, historicization but to create a discourse upon paradoxes of such heritage sites, communities, environments are at the verge of been succumbed to washed out. The installation created carried a clinically cleansed atmosphere, which encompassed performances which carried fragments of ritualistic interlayers. These performances contained intricate layers of costumed personas influenced by the traditional artistic practice. These performances create a discourse about hidden layers of matriarchy and about queer identity within the artistic tradition.
1 feet by 1 feet glass box consists of all the debris collected from the sculptures within the installation space. Black symbolizes a person who has attained Nirvana or enlightenment. Black crown symbolizes enlightened figurine. At present from the time of Pre colonial era all Buddhists are not allowed to wear black .( Buddhist nationalists considers black as an impure color and color of minority)
juxta positioned with the symbolism of Southern curative tradition. The personas ornate by the elaborate patterns consisted of recurring imagery of “mother” throughout past and present context
The installation space consists of this mortified presence of eerie sanitized presence. The floor covered by a thick layer of polythene layer to each furniture/ object draped or covered with white drapery. Creates a hyphened sensation of void , at times openness and for some comforting presence. The sculptures placed within a circuit of an in built shrine . Directly references towards to archive memorials built with the churches which were demolished during the bomb blast.
(Sri Lanka or “thun hellaya “or land of three states )
Yellow symbolizes god “Natha” , one the main four guardian deities of the island . He’s considered as “Avalokitheswara ” by the Mahayanist Buddhists and Theravada followers believe him as the persona of next Buddha or “Maithree” Buddha . Within institutionalized Buddhism , including Natha the other four deities consider as significant protectors. therefore we see them having their own in built Ghruha or houses for gods in Buddhist temple architecture . The yellow crown with four corners , grants protection from the deity Natha , to the land we reside.
UNTITLED-2, 2021
MIXED MEDIA PLASTER PARIS , GLASS BEADS , PLASTIC BEADS , WIRE, GLASS, `DEBRIS OF
ROOF TILES collected FROM DE SOYSA BUILDING
31CM (L)
17 CM (B)
UNTITLED- I, 2021
Mixed media plaster of Paris, glass beads, plastic beads, wire, glass,
`Debris of roof tiles collected from De Soysa building and
burnt Buddha statue from Kelaniya temple
39 cm (h)
UNTITLED-4, 2021
Mixed media plaster Paris , glass beads , plastic beads , wire, glass, debris roof tiles
collected from de soysa building
31cm (h)
17 cm (b)
7, 2021
mixed media plaster Paris , glass beads, plastic beads , wire,
glass, `debris roof tiles collected from de soysa building
31cm (h)
17 cm (b)
( many Sinhala ).
Goddess Pattini is also known as ” Kannagi” by the Tamil Hindu community , whose a deity called out by her followers during calamities of sickness and injustice.
In this composition she wears not the ritualistic crown/ Kagul worn for the healing purposes . But a crown which symbolizes imperial order to the land , hierarchy.
Untitled
-5, 2021
Mixed media plaster Paris, glass beads, plastic beads, wire, glass, debris roof
tiles collected from de soysa building
31cm (h)
17 cm (b
UNTITLED-3 2021
Mixed media plaster Paris , glass beads , plastic beads , wire, glass, `debris roof tiles
collected from de soysa building
31 cm (h)
17 cm (b)
When the Easter attack(2019) , happened what effected mostly was the tourism . A man who had been tour guide for months lost his income . He abandoned the building and moved out . He even left the small Madonna idol (holy water container) . The object inside this container is the idol left by this person resonate the a symbolic departure.
White symbolizes Attained Nirvana or enlightenment . The crown has multiple changes , including the bloom floral extensions which symbolizes to divine connections to the three cosmic worlds.
Performance activations created within the space is almost in the form of an archaic itinerary. Cross connecting is the form of distractive dialogues between the spectator and the memorialized future landscape.
First performance begins with Birth , where the conversation of on nation and trajectories of this nationhood remains within our bodies, carried onto the present. Continuously passes from one generation to the other , as a form of chain reaction retained to passed onto the future.
Next performance interaction series is an open event for many audiences to participate in the form of game play where anyone can join to be part of characters called ” Bling” . There is a leader and followers within this games, while spectators can sit around the table like sacrificial stage ( In which earlier the Birth performance took place) . Spectators could control the other enactors by singing “Sadde” which means noise to disrupt the movements of the others. When this phrase is sung all performers must freeze their body movements.
