Sri Lanka-born artist Vinothini explores memory and migration in Chennai exhibition

CHENNAI: Born during the Sri Lankan genocidal war and later migrating to the United States, artist Vinothini carries within her a landscape shaped by loss, migration, and the longing for home. These lived histories inform her deeply personal practice, which examines themes of displacement, survival, and the invisible weight of memory. Her ongoing exhibition 'Traces Remain Within', now on view at Kadambari Gallery, DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum, explores the layered relationships between selfhood, memory and landscape. Through drawing and collage, Vinothini traces the emotional and ecological contours of belonging, loss, and resilience.

“The title Traces Remain Within emerged from the idea that memory, loss, and belonging are not visible marks on the surface, but quiet imprints carried inside the body and the mind. Even when language, homeland, or time are lost, their traces endure, shaping how we see, feel, and create," she says.

Growing up amid the violence and erasure of Sri Lanka’s civil conflict, Vinothini witnessed displacement, loss, and the disappearance of language and place. “When I migrated to California, those memories travelled with me. They were altered by distance yet still alive beneath the surface. The drawings in this exhibition come from that space between worlds, between what was left behind and what continues to live within. Each mark becomes an act of remembering, a way of tracing what the body still holds: fragments of home, grief, trauma, resilience, and renewal," she recalls.

Her works are marked by gestures that feel both intimate and uncertain, lines that appear, fade, and reappear like the pulse of memory itself. “I translate memory and belonging through these gestures. I often layer text and fragments of found material to evoke how belonging is stitched together from what survives. The act of drawing becomes a form of remembering, a slow excavation of what remains within.”

The language of memory

Tamil script, a recurring motif in her work, plays a central role. “Tamil is my native language, the first syllable I heard, the script I learned to draw before I knew its meaning. In my work, the script often appears and disappears, echoing the fragility of memory and the erasures experienced by the Tamil people. Writing becomes a form of drawing, and drawing becomes a way of remembering.”

Sometimes the words are legible. At other times, they dissolve into texture, transformed by mirrored strokes or fluid marks that blur the line between text and image. “The script is not only text but texture. It is a trace of voice, identity, and belonging that exists even in silence.”

Where the personal meets the ecological

For Vinothini, the personal and the ecological are inseparable. The landscapes she draws, from the scorched forests of California to the tropical remnants of her homeland, mirror her inner state. “The destruction and regeneration I see in nature echo my own experiences of loss, displacement, and renewal. The earth holds memory just as the body does. Its wounds and recoveries become metaphors for personal and collective histories," explains the artist.

Among the recurring motifs in her work is the wildfire, which serves as both a symbol of devastation and rebirth. “For me, wildfire embodies destruction and transformation. It represents loss, the sudden, uncontrollable devastation of landscape and memory, but it also carries regenerative energy and the resilience of nature. It becomes a metaphor for survival and the tension between fragility and renewal.”

Enduring traces

Ultimately, Traces Remain Within invites viewers to move beyond narrative into feeling, to inhabit the quiet spaces between memory and forgetting. “I hope viewers carry with them a feeling rather than an answer. A sense of how beauty and loss can coexist, and of the quiet resilience that follows what has been burned, buried, or forgotten," says Vinothini softly.