Hema Shironi was, rather unusually in Sri Lanka, raised both Catholic and Hindu. Due to her father’s career as an (outspoken) government official in the early 1990s and 2000s, she had lived in four of the country’s nine provinces by her 20s. Trained at the University of Jaffna, a college known to produce daring artists in Sri Lanka, Shironi searches for home and community beyond geographical boundaries and ethnic and religious labels in her embroidery and appliqué work. In that sense, she belongs to the movement of contemporary Sri Lankan artists exploring their real and imagined homes during and after the Civil War between the country’s government and the terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Shironi, who was a teenager when the three-decade war ended in 2009, depicts the burdens and joys that accompanied her frequent movements within the country with a childlike curiosity in her exhibition at Saskia Fernando gallery. She finds refuge and belonging in the needle and thread — perhaps the only constant in her life. The vibrant patchwork and appliqué of “The Lord Your God Is With You” (2024), for instance, suggests a child’s excitement about a road trip to a new home. In the work, a truck is emblazoned with blessings for a safe journey in Sinhala, Tamil, and English, the country’s three official languages. In the series Jewels of Forgotten Memories (2023), she delicately stitches maps of lands, outlines of houses, and other embroidered interventions into black and white childhood photos of her extended family, friends, and neighbors from the Eastern and Central provinces. She sets them in boxes from shops in Sri Lanka that carry authentic gold and jewels, suggesting that these mementos are equally precious.
