The Changing Face of Slave Island: In Conversation with We Are From Here

Located in the heart of Colombo, Slave Island, also known as Kompanna Veediya, is one of the oldest neighbourhoods of the city. The area derives its name from the Portuguese and Dutch colonial era, when it was used as a holding place for East African slaves. Since then, the region’s complex network of alleys has been home to a multi-ethnic community comprising Sri Lankan Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese people—many of whom have lived there for generations. However, since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Slave Island has witnessed the rapid rise of towering luxury apartment buildings, hotels and shopping malls that have led to disappearing heritage sites.

Initiated in 2018, We Are From Here began as an interactive mural project to preserve the cultural heritage of the region. The accelerating high-rise development resulting in the collapse and demolition of many iconic sights necessitated the documentation and preservation of memory beyond the physical landmarks within the region. Over the past four years, Firi Rahman, Parilojithan Ramanathan and Manash Baburdeen (and earlier, Vicky Shahjahan as well) alongside many other collaborators, have been documenting the stories of the residents and archiving narratives of shifting landscapes, in hopes of preserving them for future generations.

In this conversation, Tashyana Handy speaks to Firi Rahman and Lojithan Ramanathan, two of the three founders of the group, about Ashray, an interactive installation featured at Colomboscope 2022 under the curatorial theme Language is Migrant. This is an exposition of a collective communal archive featuring photo albums, souvenirs, maps and other remnants of dispossession. Interweaving oral and visual testimonies, the archive seeks to narrate forgotten histories, mapping out the psychogeography of the region through the experiences of the community and those who have lived across Slave Island.

^{(Featured Image: Installation view of Ashray at Colomboscope. [We Are From Here. Colombo, 2020-21. Sound recordings, drawings, maps, photographs and objects. Photograph by Lojithan Ram. Supported by EUNIC. Image courtesy of the artists and Colomboscope.])}

Recorded on 16 February 2022. 

To read more about this year’s edition of Colomboscope, please click here, here, here, here and here.