Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation - Restricted Access (SIA Only)

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Contemporary Art

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the family photograph as a medium through which Sri Lankan contemporary artists reimagine memory, identity, and history. Focusing on the practices of Anoli Perera (b.1962), Cassie Machado (b.1982), and Abdul Halik Azeez (b.1985), the research examines how each artist work with the family photograph to engage with personal and collective memory, interrogate the legacies of colonialism and postwar trauma, and articulate the complexities of Sri Lankan identity in a postcolonial and post-conflict context.

Chapter One focuses on Perera’s I Let My Hair Loose in Protest series (2010), exploring how she engages with colonial visual language and reclaims agency through using her hair as a mask and an act of protest. Chapter Two examines Machado’s Afterlife series (2011–2016), which utilises found family photographs dislocated from their expected context to encourage reflections on postwar trauma. I will also briefly discuss her latest series, When Colours Return to Light (2024–ongoing), to emphasise her experimental use of photograms to capture silhouettes representing diasporic Sri Lankan identity. Chapter Three analyses Azeez’s Desert Dreaming (2019–2024), focusing on his investigation of Sri Lankan Muslim minority masculine identity and examining how he explores the intersections between landscape, urban space, and social change within the contexts of post-colonial, post-war, and post-economic protest Colombo, Sri Lanka.

By situating these artists’ works in dialogue with the modernist practice of Lionel Wendt (1900–1944), a central figure in Sri Lanka’s cultural history, the dissertation traces intergenerational and transnational conversations about representation, belonging, and artistic agency. Through comparative analysis, it identifies continuities and ruptures in visual strategies from colonial Ceylon to the period following the 2022–2024 Aragalaya protests, revealing how photography has evolved from a colonial instrument of classification to a decolonial tool of self-articulation. Across these contexts, the family photograph emerges as both personal archive and political medium, a site where private histories intersect with national narratives. The research demonstrates that the family photograph, in its capacity to evoke collective recognition and emotional resonance, enables these artists to question who controls the telling of history and how memory can be reconstituted through visual practice.

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