Palimpsest
2017
‘The Disappeared’
An exploration of the disturbing history of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka. The term ‘disappeared’ in this context refers to persons who may have been abducted, imprisoned and extra-judicially killed for political reasons. Amnesty International reports that Sri Lanka has one of the highest number of enforced disappearances, between 60,000 to 100,000 since the late 1980s.
The following work encompasses ideas of loss and memory but also conflict, repression and human rights abuses.
Image: photo-etch print of a mother of disappeared son. Photography credit Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai
Film projection onto ceramic book wall installation
Detail 'Palimpsest'
Rewriting a loss
Gayi made booklets and wrote by hand over 10,000 names of victims of enforced disappearances. This process was a meditation on these losses and the suffering of the families left behind, forever wondering what happened to their kin.
Each book filled with names was cast in slip. When fired in the kiln the paper burns away leaving ceramics ‘ghosts’ behind. The process of firing erased the names leaving blanks pages. The names have been disappeared.
‘Palimpsest’ usually refers to a piece of writing that has been erased and then rewritten on. These ceramic books become a blank surface to rewrite the loss, in this work with projected moving image.
Handwritten booklets of the names of 10,000 ‘the disappeared’ in Sri Lanka
Victim names of enforced disappearances were sources by a Human Rights organisation
A book of ‘the disappeared’ coated in slip prior to firing
Booklet covered in slip in dry state prior to kiln firing
Design for “Palimpsest”
Palimpsest
This short film is a meditation on ‘The Disappeared’ of Sri Lanka. Features voiceover work by Gayi’s mother and father, reciting the names of some of those lost to political violence. This film was projected onto a wall installation of twenty ceramic books.