Exhibition by Artist in Residence Kirushan Sivagnanam
Unsettled Ground explores displacement, transformation and ongoing questions of identity. It reflects on how colonial powers continue to shape the way we live, influencing social systems, structures and everyday behaviours.
The work holds lost memories of past and present experiences of suffering, absence and survival and considers how people adapt when displacement becomes a condition of life. It reflects on how individuals adjust to unfamiliar environments, learning to survive while carrying the weight of previous struggles. Within this process, identity is not fixed. It evolves, shifts and adapts over time. Identity here is shaped by memory, movement and the pressure of living within uneven and unequal systems. The exhibition uses clothing, magazine paper, newspapers and advertisements materials drawn from everyday life. These materials are shaped by media, consumption and public narratives, reflecting how images, language and information influence how people think, behave and imagine their futures, often while concealing deeper inequalities.
The project brings together artistic practice and community based collaboration. Through workshops with universities, schools and local communities, participants contribute materials, actions and personal traces. Clothing is tied, trapped, layered and transformed alongside printed matter, reflecting how bodies, lives and identities are shaped, restricted and reshaped over time. Unsettled Ground brings together individual memory and collective experience, asking how people live with displacement, how identities are formed through adaptation and how lives continue to evolve on unsettled ground.
The work remains open.
The thinking continues.
The ground is still unsettled.
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