Exhibitor at UAL x NAFA Student Exhibition

 

This exhibition was showcased at the Morgue Exhibition space at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London. This exhibition encompassed the explorations of each students exploration at the study abroad program in the UK. 

 

This work explores a significant event that took place in Sri Lanka, the burning of the Jaffna Public library in the Northern region of the country. This event was seen as the catalyst that set light to the 30-year civil war that took place after, resulting in consequential changes that shaped the island in defining ways. The power struggle between the Sinhalese (majority) and Tamils (minority) left the country in divided shreds.
 

The library was the pillar and crucible of heritage and culture for the Tamil people. The burning of knowledge is a deliberate act and erasure of a people leaving them with no place or identity; faceless. She aims to actively recover histories in connection with what was in hopes that it will never be again. Questions from the poem are posed repeatedly through writing, using a stick of charcoal; a burnt tree. Burnt paper is made up of the very same initial component. The use of and the act of writing with charcoal then becomes a symbolic and powerful action in re-inscribing new histories and extracting embedded traces.
 

Charcoal drawings are used frame by frame in a stop motion animation as a spire of wispy smoke rises gradually enveloping the sky with ashy plumes of darkness, referencing the line in the poem ‘The burning for two nights goes unchecked’. Faceless expressions appear and disappear into the gloom representing the weight of the past.
The ashes hold the whispers of a people, their truth, their fight. ‘For the Ash Remembers’ aims to re-inscribe, recall and rebuild. The film ends with a resounding ‘We must indeed choose to see’.