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The sepia-toned photography of Liz Fernando’s Passage of Time compels us to reach for the past, pulling at the threads of memory with a haunting and instinctual immediacy. Stoic faces, their features distant and difficult to decipher peers out from the frame. Traces of red and green from traditional clothing seep through the surface, yet remain difficult to grasp. The images bear the unmistakable features of ethnographic images produced in the region during the colonial period, while simultaneously evoking the familiar warmth of frayed photographs housed within the pages of family albums. The discoloration and decay visible on the surface stirs nostalgia for a bygone era, a reminder of memories' fragility. Standing in opposition to the unblemished imagery of the historical archives, Passage of Time challenges the static nature of the historical record - unearthing the effects of decay and the inevitable passing of time.
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First exhibited at the Colombo Biennale in 2016, Passage of Time represents Liz Fernando’s ongoing inquiry into the politics of memory and the archive. This exhibition marks the first solo presentation of this body of work, offering an intimate engagement with the notion of lost time through the lens of photography in South Asia. Fernando reimagines Albert Khan’s Les Archives de la Planète (Archives of the Planet), a collection of photographs produced in the early 20th century intended to document global communities and cultures. In seeking to leave the impressions of time onto archival photography that are otherwise presented as unaltered, Passage of Time offers a critical lens to examine the indelible effect of colonial practices, eroding and reshaping collective recollections.
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The artist’s process is that of destruction and reconstruction. The production of the image begins with a manual chemical transfer, a labour intensive act that mirrors the conditions under which the original archival images would have been produced. This act allows for the original image to disintegrate, allowing characteristics of discolouration and deterioration to emerge. The image undergoes a screen print transfer onto glass, a further act of decay that lends the image the features of hydrolysis, a chemical reaction that erodes the surface of the photograph. The final step involves the handcolouring of the image - an intimate process in which Fernando selects and utilizes colours to reconstruct the image while retaining its inherent fragility. The artist's process attempts to replicate the characteristics of damage, typically endured by photographs that experience the lapse of time and the humidity of the South Asian region.
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Central to Fernando’s practice is the role of the archive in contemporary society. The images produced and disseminated within the archive are often of a stereotypical nature, reducing individuals and cultures to their base characteristic in the pursuit of a colonial project of classification. Fernando offers a critical lens to the way in which archival imagery is produced and presented in European knowledge centers, divorced from the environmental and temporal context under which they would be produced. In instances where residues of our past are captured within archival imagery, curated by a colonial lens, the images themselves reflect the tenuous claim on our histories.
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This act of granting temporality its due course allows for disruptions to our conventional understanding of our past, acknowledging the vulnerability of memory while preserving an authentic connection to the realities of the South Asian context. The notions of lost time that the artworks evoke - frayed edges, spots of discoloration and the peeling of the surface of the images - serve to emphasize that the collective memory of the region, when viewed through colonial realities, are unable to occupy a static archive but remain mutable and ever-evolving.
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Passage of Time: Liz Fernando
Current viewing_room
