The first solo exhibition at the university...

Loss and Existence..

My current residence in Jaffna is the result of multiple histories of displacement and travel. In 1995, my family was displaced from Jaffna to Vavuniya. When we returned to visit Jaffna 27 years later, our home was no longer there. While my family continues to reside in Vavuniya, I returned to live in Jaffna as a university student to study art. Jaffna became an important site for my practice, and I decided to stay once I finished my studies. This decision required that I seek residence in a place I once called home. Most of my childhood is now linked to Vavuniya, and I often feel torn between these two locations and residences. This exhibition is an examination of this tension by looking to the stories and emotional attachments of residences throughout the Jaffna peninsula.

Though there is an abundance of new wedding halls and shopping complexes in the North, residential properties make up a significant portion of property collection. Yet many families, including my own, have struggled to keep a house as their permanent residence. There is also an abundance of abandoned homes and residential structures. What is the future of these emptied residences? Will they live long in their abandon, or eventually deteriorate and disintegrate? Will anybody come to live in them? Or will they forever remain a property for display?

21.08.2019