Sri Lanka’s trauma: Tamil artist transforms cruel experiences into peaceful pictures

According to an Indian mythology, Shiva drank the evil of the world and his throat colored blue. The blue god absorbs the mischief, he repays the bad karma without letting himself spoil himself. Nowadays one would say that Shiva embodies resilience.

The pictures of the Sri-Lankischer artist Sivasubramaniam Kajendran do this in their own way. In his paintings, which he puts in oil, many of the dark figures have something blue, a translucent cloak, a wrap skirt, light blue eyes.

One of them hovers in a triangular, blue shell, surrounded by delicate flowers and fish, the long neck of a pelic is a kind of support for the neck and back of the man floating on knees. The second dominant color is a strong yellow and serves as a monochrome background in many pictures.

Pelican as a consolation donor

Galerist Mini Kapur says yellow for the Tamil people. Light blue for the water, dark ball for the unknown. “Ecology of Resilience” is the title of Sivasubramaniam Kajendan’s exhibition in the Berlin gallery under the Mango Tree. The artist does not make a secret that trauma pursues him.

It plays a crucial role in his pictures, even though it does not become obvious. Iconography with fish, humans and birds, the colors black, blue and yellow carry the artist through his processing process: they connect him to the dead.

The Mullaitivu district in the northeast of Sri Lanka, from Derm Kajendran, was once a stronghold of the rebel organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). For 25 years there was a civil war between the Tamils ​​striving for an independent state in the north and the Sri-Lankian government. Even today, the Sri-Lankian army in the north of the country is present, the Tamil minority is not equal.

Bloody civil war

The civil war ended in 2009 with a humanitarian disaster; Sivasubramaniam Kajendran, who briefly calls himself Siva, experienced her up close. The army bombed a beach on a last offensive against the Tamil Tigers, on which thousands of civilians had also fled, and bomb splinters were wounded. He survived, but his little sister stayed gone. According to the United Nations, between 40,000 and 70,000 civilians died in the last weeks of the war.

Another disaster came about the unimaginably cruel experiences in the civil war. In 2004, a tsunami was looking for the north and east of the country. Kajendran was traveling with his mother and two sisters when the wave rolls. The four were torn apart, the older sister and the mother were washed away by the floods.

With his pictures, the artist greets the relatives who sank in the sea. His pictures are like quiet prayers. The flat figures radiate a great calm and peace. You can feel consolation and yet in mind that they tell of the climate crisis, war and oppression.

Birds often appear next to the heads of the figures shown, the artist sees them as messengers – as a carrier of good news. Iconography is reminiscent of traditional representations of Hindu deities. Born as the son of a Hindu father and a Christian mother, the artist draws from various spiritual sources, and Maria’s blue robe is also the inspiration here.

In 2014 Kajendran acquired his Bachelor in art history at the University of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, since 2019 he has held a master’s art and design from Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, Pakistan. His paintings were exhibited in galleries in New York, Los Angeles and Neu-Delhi, were often seen in the Sri-Lankische capital Colombo. Now he is exhibiting it in Europe for the first time.

“I am very honored that I can show his work,” says Mini Kapur. Kapur, who founded her gallery in Berlin 14 years ago and often shows young positions fresh from the universities in the capital. At the moment there is kohlendran as part of a residency in Paris and was therefore able to arrive at the opening of the exhibition in Berlin. It is a decision to not let the pain get down. Not everyone is able to meet them. Kohlendran sends a strong encouragement.