11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

NOTE 1 Hema Shironi, quoted in Girinandini Singh, ‘Hema Shironi explores identity as a transitionary idea at Colomboscope 2021’, stirworld , 8 July 2021, <stirworld.com/see- features-hema-shironi- explores-identity-as- a-transitionary-idea- at-colomboscope-2021>, viewed June 2024. Hema Shironi’s intricately crafted textiles are vehicles for social and personal commentary that belie their intimate scale. Shironi sensitively incorporates old family photographs, printed paper and vintage fabrics into her works to reveal a palimpsest of people and stories, while processes of stitching, embroidery and appliqué emphasise a domestic tactility and the cathartic labour involved. Her affinity for textiles is familial, as she explains: Fabric too has its own emotional language according to the region and community that produces or largely uses it. The colour palette, the weave and texture are important elements to this emotional language. My mother and grandmother were great at tailoring . . . our home was filled with fabric cut pieces and perhaps the familiarity with the medium drew me towards it. 1 Shironi’s ruminations on the sociopolitical landscape of her home nation are informed by her own experiences of cultural hybridity, ethnic division and family history. The artist was born in the ancient Sri Lankan capital of Kandy to a Catholic father and Hindu mother. Her family continually moved around the country during the civil war (1983–2009) that framed her entire childhood. Buried Alive Stories 2020 is drawn from her grandmother’s accounts of the treasured belongings she buried around her house when she was forced to move during the conflict. The artist was never able to visit her grandmother’s home, so these objects and the space that they occupied have been reclaimed in this work, which places them lightly on the surface of the textile in loose stitching. The artist considers the politicisation of language and the travesties of inequality and injustice to be subjects requiring deep and necessary interrogation. Shelter For Life 2020 takes the form of a fabric newspaper arranged around minutely stitched cartouches of text. Created over several months, it features 30 accounts of people from different regions of Sri Lanka describing experiences of suffering and hardship. Significantly, the work features the three languages commonly spoken in Sri Lanka — Sinhala, Tamil and English — that are seldom co-published in the press. Shironi’s ‘SALE SALE story SALE’ series 2022 is similarly based on the realities of individuals in Sri Lanka struggling to meet their basic needs. Tiny texts are positioned in the centre of a textured surface where Shironi has stitched through a printed page, which is then dissolved to reveal a decomposed threaded surface with only an echo of the previous image. The short English texts have been taken from the social media channels of international news outlets and philanthropic organisations. Shironi contemplates the implications of circulating such stories, deliberately slowing the process to their careful stitching in time. She also considers how such accounts — already translated into a language the subjects would likely not understand — can burden the consciousness of those who are perpetually reduced to narratives of poverty and hardship. A broader context of nationhood and political precarity emanates from works that Shironi has constructed around national symbols. Erasing Flag 2019 presents five fragmented versions of a dissolving flag — whose colours convey the nation’s cultural syncretism — to conjure how the flag is used as both a weapon and a symbol of pride in Sri Lanka. Starving Flag 2022 reconstructs the Buddhist flag, combining fields of colour, and the moral principles they represent, with embroidered objects. Each motif is central to a recent crisis or period of civil unrest: blue gas bottles that people rely on for cooking, which are notoriously unsafe and unavailable; yellow barriers that create new borders and divisions during times of conflict; red buses representing overused and underfunded public transport; fear-inducing white vans associated with terrifying wartime kidnappings; and orange fuel cans that sparked protests during the recent economic crisis. Hema Shironi’s textiles carry unassuming power in their critical reflections and provocations that pierce through their delicate materiality. The fragility of their surfaces attests to precarious experiences that the artist contemplates deeply through her work, while the untethered, floating stitches and decaying papers suggest that even as people’s lives continue to unravel, the deft motion of a needle carries the possibility they can be mended. TARUNNAGESH BORN 1991, KANDY, SRI LANKA LIVES+WORKS INCOLOMBO, SRI LANKA HEMASHIRONI Shelter For Life 2020 / Coloured thread on canvas, printed fabric handstitched on canvas / 53 x 68cm / Courtesy: The artist and Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 180 — 181