Works

In this series, Memories of Nostalgia, i explores the themes of memory, trauma and hope through the reparative practices of archival research and collaging. Growing up in Jaffna during the civil war, i recalls the sounds of destruction and anguish that have been seared into my mind. Influenced by the frustration manifested in the Aragalaya/Porattam movement, Memories of Nostalgia seeks to envision a history of Jaffna that grapples with the peoples’ suffering and the loss of tradition and heritage due to conflict, corruption and discordance. Using colonial photographs sourced from the Jaffna Library, the Jaffna Museum and digital repositories, i began this series by layering the images over traditional objects that were once essential to the daily lives of Jaffna people such as oil lamps and pestles and mortars. Using photos of once-magnificent buildings, now dilapidated due to state neglect, defunct technologies and obsolete objects that remind my own past, I create a composite archive to relieve the pain of the civil war by reflecting on innocent childhood memories. i pays particular care to the histories of Jaffna women in whom she sees herself through their “fight for life”. 1 In doing so, I reclaim the figure of the woman from a colonial pictorial lexicon, reframing the Jaffna woman as a marker of strength, unity and heritage. The second part of Memories of Nostalgia replaces objects with maps of Jaffna. As i visually travels through this landscape, questioning the concepts of borders and boundaries, i rewrites the region’s history. I produce an alternative narrative where Jaffna is not devastated by war and altered by modernity, choosing instead to foreground hope and peace. i use of maps thus rewrites a violent history by salvaging forgotten memories and places, poignantly claiming that I subconsciously live in this world.