• Catharina Danial on archiving the north through ‘Memories of Yaalpanam’ 

For Catharina Danial, memory is not a soft thing. It is a form of archive, inheritance, and a way of keeping alive the textures of a place that has changed beyond return over time.

Her latest exhibition, ‘Memories of Yaalpanam,’ on view from 2–23 May, draws from this instinct to remember with care. Rooted in Jaffna, where she was born and raised, the exhibition brings together landscapes, homes, traditional objects, photographs, and layered mixed-media works that revisit the place not only as geography, but as an emotional and cultural world.

‘Memories of Yaalpanam’ looks beyond war to document the homes, traditions, colours, and quiet everyday life of the Jaffna that Catharina grew up in. It does not reduce the north to the war and the painful memories that come with it, but, instead, is based on what lived beneath and beyond that pain: old homes, kitchens, bullock carts, bicycles, lagoons, pathways, women, domestic tools, family stories, abandoned buildings, and the rhythms of a community that retained its cultural weight even through rupture.

“I’m not talking about Jaffna and the war,” Catharina explained to The Sunday Morning Brunch. “We’ve seen lots of pain because of the war – both in the north and the south. Through ‘Memories of Yaalpanam,’ I wanted to focus more on the traditional Jaffna, the history, the culture, the women, and the lifestyle. I wanted to focus on the stories and what I’ve experienced.”

Born in 1991, Catharina belongs to a generation that grew up with conflict as part of the landscape, but she is also attached to the older ways of life she remembers from childhood. 

Her memories are filled with her grandmother’s kitchen, traditional objects used by her mother and grandmother, stories told by elders, and the physical character of Jaffna itself.

“I have experienced the beauty of a simple lifestyle in the north, as well as survival through the war,” she reflected. “There was lots of struggle, but this land healed me at the same time. In Jaffna, I became strong. My homeland is very important to me. I’m expressing not the pain, but the happy memories of Jaffna and how we lived.”

Through this lens, ‘Memories of Yaalpanam’ is not an avoidance of history. It is a widening of it. It asks viewers to look at Jaffna through memory, architecture, tradition, land, and lived intimacy, rather than only through conflict.

An artist shaped by memory

Catharina’s first encounter with art came long before she understood it as a practice or profession. She was three years old when she first became fascinated by drawing. Her uncle, who inspired her deeply, used charcoal to draw scenes of war on the white walls of their bathroom in Jaffna. Bomb blasts, helicopters, and the situation around them appeared across those walls in black marks.

“I was only three, but I still remember,” she said. “It was a tiny bathroom with white walls and charcoal drawings.” Those images stayed with her. She began copying them, and through that simple act, something opened. Art became a way of processing what was around her long before she had the language for it.

Later, she studied art in school and spent much of her time in the library, looking at images and learning from artists whose works pulled her in. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, and Vincent van Gogh became early points of fascination. At the University of Jaffna, where she studied art and design, her understanding of art widened further. She was introduced to art history, form, and the possibility of being an artist with seriousness and discipline.

Catharaina credited Dr. T. Sanathanan as a major influence in this journey, someone who helped her see that an artistic life was possible. Her first exhibition experience was also connected to him, as part of a presentation of 12 northern artists at the Saskia Fernando Gallery. That moment, she said, showed her what art could become.

“He made us artists,” she said. “He showed us that we could. After that, I fought to be an artist. I realised it was important, and that I needed to fight for it.”

In Jaffna, she explained, art was still often seen as a hobby rather than a profession. There are expectations around stability, respectability, and the safety of Government employment. To choose art full-time was to break from a social script.

“In Jaffna, people expect you to take a Government job,” she said. “They look down on artists. They don’t see it as a professional job. For me, art was a risk. My family was not supportive at first. There was criticism and bullying, but somehow I proved that art and artists can become professional, and that art can bring power to everyone’s life.”

Archiving a changing homeland

At the heart of ‘Memories of Yaalpanam’ is Catharina’s desire to document what is disappearing. Her practice is rooted in archiving homes, kitchens, daily lifestyles, traditions, and histories she has either witnessed or inherited through stories. The works are personal recollections, but they also function as a public record.

“This exhibition is especially about expressing what is behind Jaffna, before the war,” she said. “The stories I heard as a child, from my grandparents and the older people around me, about how they used to live before that. It was a great life. I have also lived after the war, but my memories are different.”

For her, the urgency comes from change. Modernisation has come to Jaffna. Old homes are being abandoned, demolished, or altered beyond recognition. The ways of life connected to them are also shifting. A younger generation is inheriting Jaffna differently, often without access to the stories, objects, and textures that shaped earlier lives.

“I wanted to document those memories for future generations. No one knows about the culture and tradition. Everything will be lost after this generation.”

Research is central to the work. “I really enjoy research,” she said. “I went to all parts of Jaffna. People love telling stories about the different buildings. Each building has its own story. They still have the beauty of Jaffna tradition despite the war. Even if homes are abandoned, I see another view as an artist. I still see the value.” She is drawn to the idea that every building carries its own history, even when it stands damaged, empty, or ignored.

The homes and buildings she depicts are not neutral subjects. They hold the presence of generations, of family habits, women’s labour, food, ritual, conversation, and survival. Her memories of her grandmother’s kitchen are especially important. The kitchen becomes more than a domestic space. It becomes a site of inheritance, where objects such as mud pots, wood cookers, oil lamps, hand mixers, and handmade meal makers carry the weight of lived culture.

Material, colour, and the texture of remembering

Catharina’s choice of materials is as important as the images she creates. ‘Memories of Yaalpanam’ uses collage and mixed media, including handmade paper, pen work, coloured pencils, transparent sheets, photographs, embossing techniques, and gold leaf. Each element has a role in how memory is built.

Her use of transparent sheets is tied to the way memories fade and return. They allow images to remain visible while also placing distance between the viewer and the past. What is remembered is present, but never fully within reach. Collage is also central to her practice. Catharina sees it as a contemporary way to hold tradition, especially when paired with photographs. For her, photographs speak with a force that drawing alone cannot always carry.

“Collage is a very specific technique I use,” she said. “I choose photographs to use in my artwork. More than my hand drawings, photographs speak louder in documenting my memories. Collage is a more contemporary way, converting tradition into contemporary work.”

Handmade paper also plays a major role. Her engagement with this material deepened through the Artists for Artists (A4A) Production Fund, Sri Lanka’s first publicly funded arts grant, where the Saskia Fernando Gallery connected her with handmade paper manufacturer Maximus, allowing her to experiment further. She had already been using handmade paper in her studio, but exposure to the factory opened new possibilities.

Through A4A, Catharina also received mentoring from Delhi-based senior artist Manisha Baswani via Zoom. This helped her refine her own techniques, particularly embossing and collage with handmade paper.

The result is a body of work that feels tactile and archival. Handmade paper gives the works a grounded intimacy. Embossing creates traces and impressions, suggesting the way memory leaves marks even when details fade.

Colour is inseparable from place. Catharina’s palette is dominated by earth tones, monochromatic browns, muted reds, and antique hues. These choices come from the land itself. “Jaffna is more brownish land than green,” she said. “There are varieties of redness, so land colours play a big part in the exhibition.”

A statement of identity

Catharina describes ‘Memories of Yaalpanam’ as a statement of identity. It is her way of saying that Jaffna is beautiful, valuable, and deeply connected to her own formation as a person and artist. “I want people to feel the beauty behind Jaffna, not the pain of the war,” she said. “I’m representing the uniqueness, the lifestyle, the tradition, and the value of the land.”

That value has become sharper because she now lives in Colombo. Distance has intensified her connection to home. Being away has made memory stronger, more insistent. “I’ve been living in Colombo for a year now,” she said. “I miss Jaffna. After I moved, I feel closer to Jaffna because of how much I miss it. The memories are stronger.”

Catharina also sees a need for broader change in how the arts are valued in Jaffna. She believes young artists need more than personal determination. They need communities that encourage them, schools that take art seriously, and families that understand creative work as more than a pastime.

“Communities need to encourage aspiring artists,” she said. “In Jaffna, that does not happen enough. They tell us to stop drawing and go study. Some schools don’t even have Art as a subject for A/Levels. They don’t see it as important in the same way they see Science as important.”

Her own path offers a counterpoint to that mindset. She has taken what many dismissed as a hobby and turned it into a life. She has taken memories that risked fading and turned them into visual records. She has taken personal longing and made it public, inviting others to enter, reflect, and remember with her.

“I can convert my memories into visual art,” she said. “Other people can experience it. That is what makes art powerful.”

In ‘Memories of Yaalpanam,’ that power lies in the quiet act of preservation. Catharina presents Jaffna as layered, wounded, beautiful, changing, and alive in memory. Through buildings, objects, colours, paper, photographs, and fragments, she creates a record of what has shaped her.