In 2014, with a group of artist, I forced myself to walk across the sands of Mulliwaikkal beach, over the graves of those taken in the final phase of my country's civil war. I came upon a charred-black album, the photos burnes and the faces obscured. With what hopes was this album brought to this place? The album and its memories haunted me, and it was an important moment in my artistic practice where I shifted focus from the tragic events of my own childhood to something shared within my community. My work strives to be a violent disruption of the normalization of life that happens in the wake of trauma, and foreground histories of violence to remember the past and engage the present in processes of healing - in Sri Lanka, but also across national borders.
text by Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah
