A land-locked imagination

“Land”, an exhibition of graphic art by Thevarasa Thajendran was held at the Theertha Red Dot Art Gallery D. S. Senanayake Mawatha, Colombo 8. While “Land” may sound general, a close look shows that the artist is obsessively focused on something specific – the land of his birth, childhood and youth, once bitterly contested by war and now appropriated by the overwhelming reach of a military machine.

The focus is so intense that the artist seems to be merged into the theme and the work, becoming one.

A 27-year-old arts and design graduate from the University of Jaffna, Thajendran now teaches art to young undergraduates there. He was a fresh undergraduate when the peace accord collapsed. He survived the final, terrible years of war with suppressed anger as part of a humiliated generation. It is the war’s harsh aftermath which seems to have affected him most profoundly. “Land” is about loss of pride, right of place, heritage and possession.

These images are based on photographs of Jaffna’s war-scarred areas taken after the war. These provide the ghostly underlying layers. Many show a bullet-scarred wall with one door. Above them are layers of other images ranging from religion and mythology, archaeology and contemporary phenomena. You see an ancient Babylonian figure or various avatars of the Hindu god Shiva, religious symbols, architectural remains and funeral urns from Mesopotamia and India. But the stark message in English ‘This land belongs to the army’ is there like a permanent seal on every image.

After a while, that statement looks like a plaster on a festering wound. In the artist’s own words:

“Children draw their feelings with charcoal on their home walls. They compose their inner-images unconsciously, freely and correctly. Even I found that kind of wall. But it was as a photo of the home wall which was given up by the people during the last war. Visually that wall impressed me to express something.

I got the printed images of that photo in grey and brown tones and started to draw about the land of my mind, its treasured memories and its spirit.

Already that image space was composed by an unknown photographer, by a sentence (this land belongs to the army), by some more words and by some shapes. So I had to react to that space and the meaning of that sentence.”

“I felt that, the drawing on the composed space like surviving with rest of the things in the war. These landscapes are also as the mindscape of my land.”

It’s an amazing artistic statement. Despite limitations of language, he has laid out the process very clearly. In this case, imagination is a tool which brings order to the chaos of the real world, disturbed and displaced by war. A photo of a door with a bullet-scarred wall already exists. The photo may differ, but the door or opening is always offset to the left. The walls are bullet-scarred. Any temptation one might have to enter is checked by the bold lettering to the right: “This land belongs to the army.”

Though these images exist in cyber space, they become more real and tangible than the actual war, which no longer continues. The out-of-bound area beyond the pock-marked wall becomes an insult to a people who were pacified by brute force. The forbidden land, therefore, becomes an extension of the war which is supposed to have ended.

That creates a presence which weighs heavier on the artist’s mind than the awful violence of the recent past. “These landscapes are also as the mindscapes of my land” means that this land of the dispossessed (i.e. places taken over by the army) has become a consciousness that is all pervasive.

I have never seen a politician at any of these exhibitions, but they would be well advised to drop in. It’s food for thought.

He was a fresh undergraduate when the peace accord collapsed. He survived the final, terrible years of war with suppressed anger as part of a humiliated generation. It is the war’s harsh aftermath which seems to have affected him most profoundly