a river is a witness

I remember. 

It is a simple and honest act – to resist forgetting – and yet its faculty is one of profound determination, resilience, and resistance.

a river is a witness is a solo exhibition of works by Jagath Dheerasekara: a multi-disciplinary artist who, born in Sri Lanka, was forced to flee the island in the early 1990s due to his political and human rights activism— a result of the 1987-1990 Southern People’s Uprising. Outside the minds of witnesses, events of that period remain largely undocumented. Obscured in – and at times, completely erased from – official history records, silenced in public discourse, and left unspoken by many who lived through it. But memory, too, leaves a trace.  

In this exhibition, Dheerasekara takes on the role of the archivist: someone who documents, records, and recalls memories for safekeeping, collecting and categorising the intangible and the almost-lost. Only the archive at hand is not one of official record: his is an archive of traces, silences, and residue. Of memory and emotion, of scars and fragments, of stories passed or carried within. These are the remnants that endure. 

The river emerges as a powerful metaphor. It, too, an archive and a repository. Of something that courses, unceasing, through past and present, from generation to generation. A witness to time, and a carrier of what lies beneath. This exhibition reminds us to reflect on what is lost when histories are buried, but also to take note of that which persists — which refuses to be forgotten – and the value that lies within that ceaseless, simple, resilient gesture. 

a river is a witness invites us to reflect on the importance of remembering complex histories— to bear witness, to honour those affected, and to challenge the forces that seek to bury them.

To insist, I remember.