Imagined Memory: In Conversation with Liz Fernando

Language is Migrant, the seventh edition of Colomboscope, provides insights into the cultural and linguistic migratory networks of Sri Lanka. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s text “We Refugees,” artist Liz Fernando, a German of Sri Lankan descent, works with archival images and visual memory to explore different stories of migration. With an emphasis on the second-generation’s experience as part of a huge Sri Lankan diasporic community, she highlights how the struggles of forced migrations and their lasting impact remain relatively untold and unacknowledged globally. In this interview, Fernando states the necessity of discussing these experiences more publicly, especially within the fields of visual arts and academia.

Also thinking about internal migration and legacies of a post-war country, Fernando outlines the notion of the term “refugee” and the complex discourse it gives rise to till this very day. One Last Night, the installation commissioned by the festival, was located at the Cenotaph, a world war memorial next to the public library in Colombo. Through the interplay between archival materials and the historical site, the artist constructed visual evidence or “imagined memory.” In this conversation with Abilaschan Balamuraley, Fernando presents her work in excerpts as she elaborates on the image’s power to narrate both personal stories as well as the broader socio-political contexts.

^{(Featured Image: Installation view of One Last Night. [Liz Fernando. Colombo, 2021. Site specific installation with large scale photographic prints. Supported by Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography and Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka. Image courtesy of the artist.])} 

Recorded on 17 February 2022. 

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