“Plucking the Stars (நட்சத்திரங்களைப் பறித்தல்). Arulraj Ulaganathan” by B. Skanthakumar (Polity)

Plucking the Stars (நட்சத்திரங்களைப் பறித்தல்) conjures memory from Arulraj Ulaganathan’s childhood on a tea plantation in Haputale, where he was born in 1992 and raised in a line room; as well as those of generations before him on a cruel incomplete 200-year passage from coolies to citizens. He wants, he says, to give “voice through my art to the silenced histories of the Malaiyaham [Hill Country]”. And so he does, in ways that stir and stay with us.

The artist’s second solo exhibition ran between 14 and 31 January 2026 at the Curado Art Space on Park Road in Colombo, spread across its second and third floors, which are accessible by stairs only. It was staged in collaboration with the ninth edition of Colomboscope; whose artistic director Natasha Ginwala crafted with the artist the useful notes for the catalogue from which I take my cues below.

The artiste’s exhibition full review by B. Skanthakumar is available on Polity Website

“A Star for Esther: On Sumathy’s “Ingirnithu”, Some Other Interventions and the Relevance of Education” by Vihanga Perera (In Love With a Whale)

“In a recent submission to “Raavaya”, Kumudu Kusum Kumara had attempted a reading of Sumathy’s Ingirinthu as a text of subaltern identity. As implied in that essay — and as it can be conjured from the text itself — the story of Esther Valli is the “silence” of a community that has been the subject of multiple oppression ever since the set up of the Colonial plantation economy. In fact, the very heart of the Hill Country Estate Tamil question was tied up with the case of “legitimacy” as a part of the citizen body: where, in the collective consciousness of Lanka, these marginalized communities were, at best, seen as the vassals of an export economy; while, at the worst, they were condemned to a sub-human status.”

via: http://slwakes.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/the-way-ahead-for-esther-valli-on-sumathys-ingirnithu-and-the-relevance-of-education/

source: www.slwakes.wordpress.com