MIGRATORY ART. MIGRATORY STUDIO.

What would you take with you if you need to leave your country this very moment but not knowing if you could return?

In September 1989, during the early years of war, mom and I left Sri Lanka. We had very little luggage, I remember two suitcases. I can’t recall what was in them. But we had, so at least it felt, all we needed.

Migratory art is an attempt to recall that feeling - taking only what one can carry, leaving all else behind, migrating, adapting, finding belonging and identity. Animals, humans, matter, data - everything seems to be subject to migration. Things coexist in flux. It seems that movement, transformation and change are constants which unite all things. I am somehow still living in a constant state of migration - if not physically, then in my thoughts. I was interested in integrating migration into my practice - as an emotion; but also the sense of practicality if one must migrate, adapt or you may cease to exist. To cut off what you don’t need, to take only what is crucial to survive as you venture on a path of adaptation to the unknown.

Migratory art is:
Art created by migrants/immigrants as a reflection and an attempt at understanding one's roots, past, present and identity as we evolve and change;

Art made in a migratory studio, meaning in collaboration, through learning or use of other skills or expertise of a known or unknown collective by venturing out from one's own known space and comfort zone;

Art which can migrate with you, which you can carry anywhere - art which fits in a suitcase.

New Delhi / London / Vienna, 2023

MEMORY & IDENTITY

What are our oldest memories? Memories of the voice of our mothers? What do we remember about our roots? The house we grew up in? Who were the first people we can remember? Who shaped us? What shaped us? 

One of my oldest memories is a black Sri Lankan Sanni Yakuma mask. Sanni masks are used by shamans for tovils (exorcism rituals), to play the role of sanni (disease) demons. There are 18 different masks but one of them I remember in particular. When I was four or five I used to wake up for weeks shaken by nightmares. As this continued my grandfather, who believed in the old ways asked for a shaman. The day for the ritual arrived, we both marched in silence through the darkness of the night to a shed on his land. The narrow path was illuminated by the light trails of fireflies, stars piercing through the crowns of coconut trees and the dim light of our petrol lamp. The door to the shed opened and the shaman welcomed me only. The air was heavy, warm and smelled of incense. The walls were drenched in flickering ochre red from the light of small coconut oil lamps. He was wearing the sanni mask and looked gruesome as he started practicing a dance. He sang prayers in Sinhala but I didn't understand him. He was in trance. And so was I looking at his fluid movements and gestures cutting through the heavy air. Time had escaped my comprehension and at the same time all was over in a flash. My grandfather and I left the place of the ritual and started walking back - I didn't understand what had happened but slowly the realisation arrived that my fears had vanished.

I have archived old family photographs, images from my youth, shared, forgotten or discarded by others. Memories before migrating to Europe. In an attempt to recall those memories I started painting the people I found on the images. As I started painting, I remembered stories which reminded me of that time. A civil war was raging back home before I left, but in my memories full of biases it was a safe haven, full of wonders. Full of exploration. Stories which I found significant and so vastly exotic and different to my parents and my difficult or at best mundane life as immigrants. I changed to digital painting and for each person I painted, I tried to remember the stories I associated deeply with them. Each story, a memory immortalised by one item or thing. Each of the thing symbolising a time, a place, emotions and consciousness. As memories they might be biased, naive, faded and distorted but they are based on personal perceptions of reality, self and others. Events which shaped the trajectory which followed and potentially influenced future beliefs, personality and decisions.

The digital paintings are materialised into embroidered portraits in silk. Embroidery being a technique used in ancient Sri Lanka to immortalise heritage, belonging and identity. In this form, they are personal heirlooms, family insignia or aide-mémoires of a complex time. Memories of an existence left behind, before it started again somewhere new. Memories from an imagined simpler life.

New Delhi / Siyambalape / Vienna, 2021

Related work: A SIMPLER LIFE and ANOTHER LIFE

MEANING, VALUE, BELIEF

What do you think about pineapple on pizza?

But also what do you think about climate change? What is your take on the Middle East conflict? How did the current lockdown affect you on a deeper level? What do you think about neo-liberal interventions in emerging markets? What do you have for breakfast? Who will you vote for? What did you think about that Oprah interview on Sunday? How do you feel on a Monday? What do you believe in? Just how do you feel about EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW?

I cannot remember the first time the realisation dawned on me what an incredibly powerful storytelling tool a meme is. For our species of storytellers it has the power to convey a message in an instant and create or divide opinions. At the same time it has no material worth; the same meme would be copied and recycled many times by different people, different political fractions, different ideologies. Each weaving in their own narrative, feelings, their humour and their interpretation of reality, values and truth, mass communicating and spreading it through the world wide web.

I wanted to take the memes out of their digital enclosure, bring them into the physical world, stopping the process of giving meaning and opening up to reflection. The technique which is used to realise this is weaving; in bygone times, a victor of a battle, a ruler, or person of rank would use weaving in form of tapestry to tell a story – similar to a modern day meme, this story would be told from one single perspective. The incredibly labour intensive and costly process of creating such a piece of art propaganda would give value and ultimately significance to a story, making it “real”. I liked the idea of combining these two elements; taking away any visible text or meaning from the memes, leaving them in their bare form, taking them out from the immaterial digital sphere and giving them a material value, through an ancient artisanal process. 

When I shared an image of the first carpet work with another artist, I was asked “so, how much did it cost to make”? It was a revelation. This question has been asked many times since then. When I took photographs and got them developed, no one asked “so, how much did it cost to make them”? When a painter places a painting in a gallery, no one asks the cost for the paint tubes, easels, sleepless nights and how the canvas was made. How many liras did it cost da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa? If we push this further, what is the actual production cost of our ultimate exchange commodity: money. How many dollars does it take to create one single dollar? 6.2 cents. Figures, symbols and ultimately stories are printed on paper and a medium is accepted and approved by society through general consent. A process and model which took millennia. The meme has no material value and exists in the instant. The medium of weaving was always in the real world and the collective mind, as such has material value and is a metaphor for longevity. When these two worlds collide and the meme is reincarnated in the form of a hand-made carpet, evaluation through an accepted form of general consent seems to be needed. 

I found this interesting. Value is not created by an object itself, but an idea that speaks to the observer. This raises questions on our drive for creating immaterial and material values, the need to give meaning to things through storytelling, the importance of time in the (e)valuation process and the significance of general acceptance by the collective.

V.I.R.A.L is an ongoing body of work, creating tapestry for the 21st century. Handmade memes, where symbolism cannot be directly decoded. It is just what we see, what we feel, lines, colours, shapes and textures. Objects devoid of meaning and stories, just carrying a form of value, but in a different form and realm. Now, how do we feel about that?

London / New Delhi / Goa, 2020 - 2021

Related work: V.I.R.A.L2021, V.I.R.A.L2022 and IN CARNATIONS

ON INTERDISCIPLINARY PHOTOGRAPHY

What do you think when you think of a photograph?

Did you take one today? How did it feel? Did it make things real? ‘‘Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality. One can’t possess reality, one can possess images. One can’t possess the present but one can possess the past’’, Susan Sontag once wrote. So is it an attempt to proof existence, a memory or a story about something, about someone? A document, a “captured” fragment of time and space. Or could it be something else? Could it become something else?

My path and my practice always gravitated around photography and it’s a long way photography has come since the first daguerreotype photograph almost two centuries ago. Evolving from a painstakingly slow, hazardous and complex process, using light and light sensitive substances to document things. Playing second fiddle behind the established arts of painting, sculpture, performance, music, literature and film for over one and half centuries. Making a breakthrough into contemporary art in the 1970ies and arriving in the 21st century: a democratic digital epoch, making EVERYONE a photographer.

So what’s next? Could a photograph and photography morph into something else? Could a performance or poetry include photography? Could it be a part of a sculpture or be a basis for land art? Maybe photography might be part of a painting, its physical or digital canvas. Or visa versa. Something more than a visual stimulus, something with smell, textures and taste. Or a combination of all of the above?

In Interdisciplinary Photography an image is the starting point. It takes the centre stage in a multidisciplinary creative process - there are no limits, no boundaries where that process may lead. It interconnects and interlayers different artistic disciplines, science and technology. The final “product” in this artistic process and quest being something entirely different to a photograph manifested in the digital or physical space or a new photographed which emerged from the creative process.

I started taking photographs on analog cameras before moving to digital cameras – I always saw the camera and photography as a tool of making. The capturing of the “right” image was more crucial than technical perfection and its idealisation. The image was a way - in Sontag’s words - to possess the past. It was a tool to capture a finding of something extraordinary, of a thought, to take control of a moment, in a world which can’t be controlled. The image still takes centre stage in my practice, but today it is the starting point on the road to expression and finding.

Interdisciplinary Photography is not to be seen as the end of photography as we know it but the birth of a new type of photography and photographer. It moves from the photographer who uses the camera to document something into a creator who uses an image to realise something entirely different. A mind shift. It pushes the boundaries of traditional documentation and creates a symbiosis of art forms, science, technology, combining, morphing and connecting disciplines and their processes. Venturing into the realms of experimentation, artistic research and exploration.

When one art form is not enough to express oneself, the interdisciplinary approach enables to widen the horizon of expression, of creation and thought.

New Delhi / London / Vienna / Colombo, 2018-2021

Related work: V.I.R.A.L2021, V.I.R.A.L2022, A SIMPLER LIFE and AN ULTRASTRUCTURE OF BRITAIN

ON PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVES

A photographic negative is the total inversion of an image. Dark areas seem light and light areas seem dark. A negative of a colour image becomes a curious, backwards kaleidoscope: Blues appear yellow, greens appear magenta, reds appear cyan and vice versa. Colour subverts itself, into a blueprint of reality.

Some of my work, such as the POSSIBILITIES and the IN-CARNATIONS series, uses negatives as a tool to question our understanding of our environment – subjects, objects and spaces which we see every day, without registering other parallel dimensions.

The information age has led to a change of our attentional behaviours and the way we absorb visual information. In the era of image overload and sensorial overstimulation, this work demands you to take a step back. To question why and how we notice things, process the world around us and what we accept as reality.

In positive or negative, the seen and unseen is transformed; forever a blueprint determined by the perception of the individual.

London, 2019

Related work: IN CARNATIONS and POSSIBILITIES