‘Video Landscape: Now I never go home on the old road‘,
2015 Single Channel Video, Looped, Color, Sound, 10 min

Now I never go home on the old road is a collaged sequence of the multiple journeys the artist made between Sri Lanka’s capital city Colombo, his current place of residence, to Negombo, his hometown. The footage was shot over two years, and reflects the rapidly changing landscape of the country. This is indicative of the post-war phase, characterised by widespread urban development. Through the artist’s eyes we see how remnants of the violent war were concealed with concrete and tar, in the effort to fit into the generic mould of cityscapes found all over the world. These “unexceptional, repetitive testimonies of urbanity” evoke the jarring absence of “erstwhile topographies that evoked wartime memories”. As we are drawn into the narrative, we are led to wonder what these constructions are hiding beneath them, and to ask whether trauma and suffering can indeed be concealed by their conspicuous materiality.