To fully appreciate the two-channel video work Eezhavati (2024) in Ilavenil Vasuky Jayapalan’s exhibition of the same title, you need to either stand or sit with your back against the wall, positioned between two angled screens. Even then, I cannot find an ideal position for viewing the work; it is simply impossible to take in both screens simultaneously. Instead, my gaze flickers back and forth, attempting to register everything. You might assume the screens were arranged in this manner due to a lack of space. Yet Kunsthall Oslo is spacious enough that alternative placements could have been considered, leading me to suspect the choice is deliberate. As a viewer, I am backed into a corner, so to speak – defenceless and surrounded.
The last time I encountered a work by Jayapalan, it was even more confrontational. Robed in black, like a monk, and standing inside what appeared to be a cave – though relatively credible sources claimed it was, in fact, an outdoor pizza oven – he unleashed a massive noise concert over Jeløya by the Oslo fjord. This occurred on a sunny and seemingly idyllic Saturday. While some members of the audience attended specifically to witness the performance, there were also numerous families with young children and others who had inadvertently settled at Galleri F15’s outdoor café to enjoy coffee and cake.
While the Momentum Biennial 2023 is otherwise remembered for its social and well-meaning (if not always successful) projects, such as Gudskul’s collective kitchen, Jayapalan transformed the site into a thunderous inferno – far from a place for dialogue or any other form of friendly interaction. As an onlooker, you had only two options: to remain and allow the sound to resonate through your body, or to flee. For those who stayed, the performance evoked references to the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka – or Tamil Eelam, as the Tamils’ homeland in the north and east of the island is known – set within a soundscape that rendered Galleri F15’s vista of blue seas and sailing boats a thin, illusory wallpaper pasted over an abyssal darkness.
The soundscape at Kunsthall Oslo is far more inviting. Although it does incorporate some darker bass undertones, the piece is free of noise elements. Once again, the backdrop is the genocide and the struggle of the Eelam Tamils, yet the tone is distinctly more utopian. Drawing on the notion of the divine as both transcendent and inherent in all things, Jayapalan presents a monologue that focuses on the possibility of transformation from within – in other words, the ability to choose and shape one’s own life, and thereby influence one’s own rebirth. The exhibition’s accompanying text revolves around a sci-fi scenario and refers to “genome freedom,” though this story is not really integrated in the show. Instead, I find myself reflecting on recent research suggesting that traumatic experiences can alter our genetic makeup, making them transmittable to future generations not only as inherited narratives but also as embodied memories. Jayapalan’s work evokes the opposite: a form of inner revolution.
The evocative video work appears to combine photographic material with digital animation, presenting a range of visuals that spans images of the universe, sweeping tracking shots over and through various landscapes, lingering close-ups of youthful faces and what resembles the interior of a body. At one point, a red flag appears – an unmistakable revolutionary symbol – which connects visually to the red hues that dominate much of the video and the exhibition as a whole. On the wall at the opposite end of the exhibition space, an animated version of a yantra – a geometric diagram traditionally used in tantric meditation – is projected in shades of red. Here, too, there appears to be a struggle between light and darkness, accompanied by spiralling movements that continually shift direction.
A reddish-orange textile is draped around a centrally placed white partition wall – a minimalist interpretation of a Tamil temple, or koyil – framing a mahogany-coloured “cosmic egg,” traditionally a symbol of creation. Strictly speaking, it is only half an egg, split in two and mounted on the wall between the two aforementioned video screens. Directly opposite the yantra is another symbol associated with creation (and destruction): a lingam-yoni statue, consisting of a vertical pillar-like shape representing the masculine, or the god Shiva, and a basin-like form representing the feminine, or the goddess Shakti. As if to suggest that this lingam is not actively in use, some withered leaves rest upon it. Equally striking as the references to genetic technology are these nods to traditional Hindu symbolism. They seem, however, to function more as cultural markers than as expressions of authentic religious belief. Yet notions of what is considered authentic or inauthentic – the identity that one is born with versus the identity that one creates – is precisely what Jayapalan’s work puts into play.
How do survivors of genocide move forward? And what if the genocide never truly ends? These seem to be underlying questions here, with one answer given being to refuse those who deny your history and existence the power to define you. The exhibition’s main emphasis however, seems to be on the intention to create your own reality, rather than the specifics of how to achieve it. Eezhavati emerges as a place to gather strength – or, for those of us outside the Tamil diaspora, also a reminder and a place for raising awareness.
