First there is the walk.
Then there is the river a dark salt line cutting through the city.
It is mirrored in my memory by the river that is home, light filled and fuzzy.
There is the blue house over looking the river,
There is the yellow house where on a good day you can hear the sea.
There is the red house on Darug country.
There is my mama* saying aise aise hai to my mum....
Is it, is it all there is?
Or this the way it is meant to be?
That it has to be this way?
How do we remember ghosts? Bodies that we were never meant to be acknowledged.
What if these ghosts were your ancestors how do you account for them, how do you let them know you are remembering?
Maybe it begins with an aural history.
*Fijian Hindi for maternal uncle
Then there is the river a dark salt line cutting through the city.
It is mirrored in my memory by the river that is home, light filled and fuzzy.
There is the blue house over looking the river,
There is the yellow house where on a good day you can hear the sea.
There is the red house on Darug country.
There is my mama* saying aise aise hai to my mum....
Is it, is it all there is?
Or this the way it is meant to be?
That it has to be this way?
How do we remember ghosts? Bodies that we were never meant to be acknowledged.
What if these ghosts were your ancestors how do you account for them, how do you let them know you are remembering?
Maybe it begins with an aural history.
*Fijian Hindi for maternal uncle
Aise Aise Hai (2021) uses the act of reading to consider history and its future possibilities. The work is constructed of a live reading, textile, objects and video that explore Lal’s relationship to Indentured Labour, personal migratory histories and time.
Shivanjani Lal is a Fijian-Australian artist, currently based in London. She is tied to a long history of familial movement; her work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss and healing. A fundamental concern is how art develops and represents culture as it transitions between contexts, while also probing the experiences of womxn in these situations of flux.
Working across mediums to explore Indenture and migratory histories from the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Writing has become a focal point of her current research. The interpretations of which are explored through various mediums. Reading and objects guide audiences through lived and imagined narratives that attempt to decipher what is lost and the possibilities of futures.
Lal is the recipient of the 2019 Create New South Wales Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, was a 2020 Studio artist at Parramatta Artists Studios and the current Georges Mora Fellow and her work has been shown in Australia, New Zealand, India, Barbados and France.
July 2021
@arti_shivanjani
Working across mediums to explore Indenture and migratory histories from the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Writing has become a focal point of her current research. The interpretations of which are explored through various mediums. Reading and objects guide audiences through lived and imagined narratives that attempt to decipher what is lost and the possibilities of futures.
Lal is the recipient of the 2019 Create New South Wales Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, was a 2020 Studio artist at Parramatta Artists Studios and the current Georges Mora Fellow and her work has been shown in Australia, New Zealand, India, Barbados and France.
July 2021
@arti_shivanjani
Goldsmiths
Postgraduate Exhibition
MA Artists' Film
& Moving Image
15-20 July 2021
Small Pool
Laurie Grove Baths
6 Laurie Grove
London SE14 6NH
See you there!