Mother's Calling or Maathru Yaathikawa

Chathuri Nissansala creates a new live work extending their ongoing research into ritual, inheritance, and the unstable figure of the “mother” as both intimate and political body. Drawing on southern Sri Lankan ritual traditions, the performance activates gesture, voice, and collective as embodied knowledge. The work forms a provisional ritual environment in which domestic elements become charged sites of address. Through repetition, it oscillates between mourning and collective calling. The maternal emerges as a shifting role, where authority, care, and violence remain entangled within shared memory and presence.

Chathuri Nissansala (b.1993, Colombo) is a multidisciplinary artist working across performance, painting, sculpture, and graphics. Her practice explores gender, class, queerness, and nationalism in Sri Lanka. She holds a BFA from Chitra Kala Parishath and an MFA from MSU Baroda, and is a 2024-2026 Resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.