Performance conducted at the ” way of the forest” edition of Colomboscope in year 2024. The remains of the performance were left inside a shrine space installation at a corner space of the venue JDA Gallery Colombo.
My process thematically begins with inquiries around understanding the symbolic maneuvering of the term ‘‘Memorialization’ and constructing memory, archive, resurrection, gender, and gradual erasure processes within the historical and contemporary socio-political consciousness. Cultivate frameworks to rethink and reimagine futurism amidst the sharp intakes of religious fanaticism, oppression, cultural biopolitics, and gendered segregation within South Asian nomenclature.
A banyan tree and its roots are tied up with these cloth pieces. A ritualistic method of seeking salve as a wishing conduit.
My recent research and work emphasize frameworks of racialized cultural identity. The corporeality of bodies and the differential between bodily violence and gendered identity within the historical context. As a queer-identified person, my process begins to unravel the existence of intergenerational trauma that seeps into genetic configurations within our bodies—causing adverse effects within our cellular structures and resulting in mutations, modifications, and reconfigurations within our bodies. Carrying its cause effects intergenerationally into the future physically and psychologically. We begin to find coinciding connections and the existence of queer analogies in the blurred structuralism of the body, self, and identity. Constantly oscillating across time spans as performative convoys as trails of the past, present, and future can be found within the body as a modified organism within each generation, never able to separate each other.
Spaces abound on sites in the Jaffna peninsula. There is a belief that some locals who were initial residents p of these war-stricken places prefer to leave the debris as it is. You will discover at times hidden remains and idols in these spaces.Site of a ceremonial space closely located near the banks of the Mannar road, in Jaffna.Statues collected from different sites and their contours are taken over by growing living organisms.
Under the apprenticeship of master Somapala Pothupitiya and pala Pothupitiya, learning methods of embroidery and textile making of ceremonial costumes, distinguished under the southern Matara regional curative tradition. I begin to rethink and analyze the existence of gendered cultural identity to create a dialogue on representation and historiography. A diffractive dialogue emerges through encounters and conversations during this period to translate and decode pedagogies within the textile and rituals. There are hybrid entanglements within these performative practices that branched out to south Indian cultural attributes to influences of institutional Buddhism and Eurocentric colonialism.
Its “Theravadic” Buddhism-influenced philosophical branch explains the existence of the soul and identity as a biomorphic entity. Broadens up newer discourses; around queerness within materiality and figuration. A territory considered taboo, even within the community of practitioners by ethnographic researchers.
Intercept the rhetorics of the attire’s talismanic textile patterns, origination, transformations, and embodiment. We begin to trace the existence of the body, self, and identity within the symbolism of mythology, oral narratives, and historiography. Creates an urge to reconceptualize and demystify these anthropological portrayals of the body and identity.
Documentation of the ritaul depicted in the archives of the ” Ambalangoda, Mask Museum
The entity Black Prince or ‘ Kalu Kumaraya’ receives his offering. ( In many places this entity is called as ” Kalu yaka ” or Black demon , who is a different entity to the Black Prince)
Documentation of the ritaul depicted in the archives of the ” Ambalangoda, Mask Museum
The assertions of colonial discourses have maneuvered the formations of the cultural ritualistic tradition. Hegemonic view of these ritualistic practices through the colonial lens. How “ Victorian Buddhism”, actual spiritual Buddhism, and Sinhala Buddhism continuously pose different forms of ideologies with ritualistic practices. (Prof. Gananath Obeyesekere writings) . How the Lankans claim Buddhism and its tradition gradually undertake to reconfigure the readings of history through its political structures
The visibility of its objects, native subjects, and displays fostered problematic analogies that harbored ingrained disturbances, causing various ripples of marginality and affecting the continuity of the true core of the tradition. Chargain’s situation is that these discourses dominate the understanding of symbolisms, emotions, experiences, identity, and coexistence and tend to forget the historical conditioning that formed these studies.
Spaces abound on sites in the Jaffna peninsula. There is a belief that some locals who were initial residents p of these war-stricken places prefer to leave the debris as it is. You will discover at times hidden remains and idols in these spaces.
Therefore Anthropology of an experience means how an individual receives experiences of their culture and events by their consciousness. How representation, performances, objectification, and texts create a dialect with lived experiences forms the experience of understanding the formation of cultural objects.
The Crux of my argument is that readings of histories and concepts become problematic for the structures of anthropological objects. The problems generated through the practices constitute them and whether we want to consolidate or find sensitize methods that provoke cognitive questionnaires on these subjectivities.
Therefore the work takes in an embodiment of Recreating an interplay of narratives through visiting the mythical past administered as a core subject to speculate materials of histories, ‘old’ colonized entails layers of segregation, ‘cultural’ stories designed for viewers to engage and embrace their differences through tracing and intercepting as a form of mapping the past and the present. Recreating mutant dystopian figurations of resistance within the portrayal of ‘Sri Lankan’ identity.
Reclaiming spaces, cultural portrayal, trans materiality, de colonization through building Speculative ephemera from oral narratives, rituals, and archaic materiality.
Haraway recognizes that ‘figures collect hopes and fears and show possibilities and dangers. Both imaginary and material, pure root peoples in stories and link them to histories’ (Haraway, 2004, p. 1).
Taking the role of an anthropologist mapping systematic process of erasures (Chrono phage) through collecting these discarded icons are considered omens by folk belief, traces onto spaces and landscapes of past and present volatile histories. Conducting visits to sites of ritualistic performances, religious presence, and abandoned architectural spaces relates to epistemological histography. Creates curiosity to make disjunctive narratives upon their looming existences against their didactic origins.
Later on, Integrating them into residuals or symbolic objects of resistance.
In curative ritual traditions of the Matara region (geographical area), artisans believe the entities exist as transmigratory bodies/ fluid forms within ecosystems. My work observes these formations or substances that materialize as sacred icons but are mundane substances. A pile of rock formations near a water body or under a tree becomes a site of these existences. A sacrilegious form that at times exists within contours of debris within the landscapes of hidden narratives of trauma and foliage. There are heritage sites and sites that succumbed to deterioration located within Colombo. I tend to collect debris or fragmented essences from them. Such as the demolished Rio complex or the abandoned houses in the Jaffna landscape tend to become substances/ materials within each composition. Debris taken over by the roots and moss tends to become another existence of these sacrilegious ecosystems that have taken the shape of long-extended mutations of time and biotopes.
What is to be considered natural or permanent, do objects and their materiality embody a trans-materialistic, queer consciousness? I collect these objects classified as omens and unnatural. It could be expired toxic tear gas canons collected from sites of protests. Bear witness to the 2022 revolts or a sculptural icon mapping the violent entail of deepened consciousness of fear. I begin to access their materiality and objectivity, gradually allowing them to transition. To discover a connection between their psychic and physical manifestation.
These objects and fragments are shaped in the form of assemblages of multiple-layered narratives. Scavenging and mapping discarded materials garnished and organically transforms into mutant beings. Textile layering contains rhetoric that communicates the language of healing, interconnecting fragments of broken disembodiment. They are a layer on the surface of a covering made of discarded tea filter paper bags. Sutured, ruptured, tattered across the surfaces, ornamented with these textiles maneuvered for healing, repair, and interconnection. Tea has become the pivotal recognition of embedded Ceylonese colonial hangover. The material itself creates a layered Hyde-formed exteriority that of a skinned being. Textures amplify the grotesque form, flipping between inside and outside openings of the objects. They transcend into forms integrated with dualistic existence, a carcass or a divine entity.
Materials embracing their chaos and monstrosity are pictured as disfigured, mutated figurines. The rendering resurfaces the monstrousness by suturing and layering a skinned being to create an assemblage of surgically constructed flesh with beaded extensions protruding from their bodies. Their grotesqueness amplified as if their humane signifiers had gradually peeled away.
Debris attached to the body of the idol is collected from the heritage site known as the De Soyza building demolished in the year 2021
These mutant corporeal beings embedded with the symbolic representation of the self, body, and identity are subjugated to domains of systematic segregation, violence, and post-colonial views that have been fostered for ages. These fragments interconnect each other through extensions recreating a map of intergenerational carriers. Hence they exist between the territories of ritualistic objects or as artifacts or times as signifiers or testimonials bearing flukes of intergenerational agitation.
Debris collected from the demolished building De Soyza , year 2021
Part of the initial wall pieces of the 150 year old historical building.
Creating a ritualistic performative that draws parallels to the mythical spaces of the divinity “ Black prince and the queer embodiment. Ritualistic space for offering well as connectivity. A space that carries fragmentations of the existences of the present queer body.
During southern ritualistic performances, a distinctive array of structures are designed with meticulous geometric shapes symbolizing homes or what we call “palaces” of these entities. Offerings were placed in table format to conduct sacrilegious rituals for these entities as ailments.
In this series, the sculptural formations will be displayed as a form of somatic entity part of a ritualistic possession. At times the ill person is also known as “aathuraya”’s body extracts; hair, nails, and saliva are offered as extensions of the body. These objects are offerings during possessions apart from the foods for the entities to devour.
In the form of Assemblages, these sculptural beings will be on fragmented structures carrying forms of debris or sediments collected from various sites. Numerical marks where some of the debris or repertoires(materials or entrails of performance) of performances are left within the compositions. One would find hidden trails of objects that exist as offerings. The entities/somatic beings connect through nodules of elaborate textile extensions. They exist as ecological formations that have gradually enclaved space and structures abandoned for a period.
Each sculptural assemblage will carry a fragment of memory in the form of a performative extraction. Augmented reality is moduled to each fragment, which narrates another tale of the space, and bodies in the form of speculation. Black Prince creates this alternative reclamation of each object’s tangibility.
The Wesleyan juvenile publications, printed in London in the 1800s, were sold at the Wesleyan mission house for a penny. These volumes of publications were considered handbooks or information publications about divinity practices to lay the foundation for the spread of Christianity within colonies. This publication was exclusively printed for young readers, giving an oeuvre about their perspectives of colonies, ritualistic belief systems, and cultural traditions through the Eurocentric gaze.
In its 9th volume, published in 1852, we come across a depiction Under the title “ black female devil” with distinctive imagery of demons showcased devouring infants. This pop depiction circulated by the masses as the actual traditional portrayal of the black prince represented specifically under anthropological studies as an entity worshipped by the Cingalese community (Sinhalese community at present). Performers are misgendered or categorized under the binary taglines by the ethnographic gaze of the colonizers. Here we could observe the confusion of classifying the gender identity of the black prince, as the oral traditions represent the entity as a trans-sexual gender-fluid character personification.
While deconstructing the written analysis and the imagery, I began to trace the roots of its attire formation. There are disparities in portraying the “black prince” identity within written historical material and oral ritualistic narratives known as “Janapravada. The black prince becomes a protagonist character bringing forth multiple stories interconnecting narrative upon body and identity succumbs into racial-politicalized, gendered, historicized cultural object or artifact.
These costumes are still in progress.Costumes were recreated while observing the image portrayed of the black prince.Lamp ignited with triangular-shaped “ mal thattuwa”, a small pavilion made to place offerings in the rituals.
Lamp ignited with triangular-shaped “ mal thattuwa”, a small pavilion made to place offerings in the rituals. At another space, an incense ignited with burnt hair and nails poured into a vessel with scrambled coconut shells. A “Paan” or a hemp mat is placed on the ground that lays a standing sculpture aligned in the format of how the viewers were seated during the rituals. Triangular “Mal Thattu” offering pedestal formatted doorways. Puts together the fragmented pieces of the offerings.
These narratives of the assemblages create reimagined somatic beings that are fusions of ritualistic, uncivilized, and mutant testimonies. They emerge layer by layer through the cognition of our oral historical implications consisting of an amalgamation of divinity, machinery, and humane essences.
Debris collected from the De Soysa building including the ornamented railings, discarded objects of the divine, and cribs collected from ritualistic spaces.
When black prince touch you
Your body succumbs to them
You are a barren womb bearer
You shall not be a mother
Did you know that once upon time, kali’s black avatar gave birth to black prince.
Yet they don’t allow her followers to be these femme bodies
Bodies who are not defined to be carrying these rituals.
But why ? Why ?
Because they spurt red color from their lower bodies.
These bodies cannot birth
So now they are omens
Can there be mothers who aren’t femme?
Can there be followers who are not femme?
Can you be a mother ?
Can I be a mother ?
Who decides someone is called a mother.
Can you see those bodies tying cribs on those branches?
Requesting again and again yearning to be granted blessings from the deities.
I want to be a mother
I’m waiting for my child.
Narrative: Mother into thy hands I commend my spirit
Material:
Stones collected from the sea area near Wellawatte railway station, hemp woven mats ( made by traditional craftsmen), oil clay lamps left on top of betel leaves, doorway structure made of leftover peeled barks of trees, glass beaded embroider with cotton threads, hair of my mother( biological).
Ratnavalli was a deposed princess as she craved for human flesh
her father, made her to become part of Rodiya community
some say
Her followers worship goddess Paththini / Kannagi (Tamil Hindu goddess), they were the men of the Paththini cult and when one needs to search for ailment from the black prince
She’s called out to show her divine grace
Her followers were silenced by the Buddhist cult even though they were the servicemen of the sacred Bo tree
They were the untouchables and the black prince was born from her black avatar.
My mother witnessed charred bodies called hanging men
There were burning piers that were considered untouchables in the past.
These brittle charred bodies on the grounds, were considered never to be touched
laid as fragments scattered in the landscape.
The ones who revolt are now considered untouchables they are the ones brutally taken away
Some never return, others with violent marks
The sculpture was placed on a rocky structural pedestal laid on top of a hemp mat for the ill person to be seated, confronting the entity. A long extension connects the brittle body on the other side through the doorway structure.
The brittle body consists of the fragmented debris collected and interconnected with the layered imagery. Using screen printing technique the imagery is later sutured with layers of used tea paper to create a dermis hyde formation. Then it is placed on the mat as if it is an “Aathuraya” ( ill person) waiting for the encounter of salve.
Material: Fragmented screen prints, created from the mono printing experiments using charcoal, pastel, crayon, and watercolor washes transferred onto the surface. Later the paper surface is sutured with layers of discarded tea paper bags and then embroidered onto. Debris is collected from wooden mantle pieces and the bark of a coconut tree created as a mantle.
During the ritual of Kalu Kuamara Samayama to ward off the mishaps caused by the entity, which is combined with the Riddi Yagaya as well.
When a woman conceives a child in the Bentara region. They perform a ritual of placing a clay pot aside symbolizing the conceiving. Then during the ritual, the pot is broken after giving birth or at times before birth.
Conception is obstructed by him, causing miscarriages, and producing deformed children. He causes various illnesses to women from time to time.
Shells didn’t spare the womb of the pregnant woman who had her abdomen torn open in shelling. The limb of her unborn baby had protruded out through her wound.
Material: Debris collected from the De Soyza building, skin textures created from discarded tea paper bags sutured onto the surface. Wax, other discarded fabric, plaster of Paris, wood, and flowers collected from Palmyrah trees brought from the Jaffna Peninsula.
Halo design in the form of a lotus bud: The form of a Lotus bud carries symbolic representation from purity up to a colossal structure lotus tower. Symbolic political sign in Sri Lanka. Commemorating an era of regime controlled by the state dictatorship.
The imagery of a black devil with two little babies in her hands whom he will devour. Represent the deities the Ceylonese worship. Which will infuse fear perhaps grotesque of the uncivilized islander’s moral behavior.
Parents made offerings to their demon beings when their children were sick or died.
“O come now, then Black female devil, who dwells under the rocks and stones of the black sea, to our offerings! Take away the sickness the host caused, by accepting our offering!”
Hang a pot on the tree top with its mouth closed off.
The black prince will think it’s the womb and believe the embryo died inside the barren land known as the womb.
They made these lands barren
Sending their messengers to choose the ones called the enemies.
They cornered many nameless children…taking them down one at a time.
Their innards gutted out …
But did they really do it ….
Oh! Oh! Oh!, we succumbed to the black entity….
Debris collected from the demolished building De Soyza , year 2021
Part of the initial wall pieces of the 150 year old historical building.
Narratives: Udumbara ( in process)
Material: One Oil barrel can be cut off to create a shrine form. Tear gas canon collected as debris used on protests that were conducted in the year 2022
Some people wore nooses and ropes and were diagnosed with incurable diseases called “Udumbara “.
They lived secluded, detached from social contact, and believed their pure appearances slowly faded away, mutated and disfigured.
Therefore, they were “untouchables” and were named “Rogen” (disease) and “Dadi” (Stubborn). Combining these two terms creates the term Rodi, which means bodily deformity.
There are bodies existing like the black prince, hidden amongst us.
Hiding , invisible , lurking within spaces that are lonesome, fearful…
They are faded beings within borders
Cannot be defined as a man or woman
They are like the black prince
Waiting for encounters
Called incubus beings
Succumbing, luring their prey
Perhaps they are like the black prince
Never understood
Moves from one to another
Taking over spaces that don’t belong to them
Or perhaps you have decided they don’t belong here
A thin line of rope and yellow barricades detached the ones who were the enemy.
Some wore thin ropes around their necks and some were cuffed and dragged along like meat bags.
They were all touched by demonic entities, that is what they said.
The performers originated from the low groups. The mugs, the chairs, and the attires were separated for them.
Even the entrances and exits were separated from others.
Taking the role of an anthropologist mapping systematic process of erasures (Chrono phage) through collecting these discarded icons are considered omens by folk belief, traces onto spaces and landscapes of past and present volatile histories. Conducting visits to sites of ritualistic performances, religious presence, and abandoned architectural spaces relates to epistemological histography. Creates curiosity to make disjunctive narratives upon their looming existences against their didactic origins. 
