Chennai, 26 October (H.S.) : Sri Lankan-born artist Vinothini, who later migrated to the United States, is currently showcasing her intensely personal exhibition titled 'Traces Remain Within' at the Kadambari Gallery, DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum, in Chennai.
The exhibition is a powerful exploration of the layered relationship between selfhood, memory, and landscape, deeply informed by her lived experiences of loss and displacement.
Vinothini's practice, which utilizes drawing and collage, delves into complex themes of displacement, survival, and the invisible weight of memory, stemming from her birth during the Sri Lankan civil conflict.
The exhibition's title, 'Traces Remain Within', encapsulates the artist's philosophy that memory, loss, and belonging are not visible marks but quiet imprints carried inside the body and mind, enduring even when homeland or language are lost.
She views each mark she makes as an act of remembering, a way of tracing what the body still holds: fragments of home, grief, trauma, resilience, and renewal.
A central element in her work is the Tamil script, her native language. The script appears and disappears in her pieces, echoing the fragility of memory and the cultural erasures experienced by the Tamil people during the conflict.
She uses the script not just as text but as a texture, a trace of voice, identity, and belonging. Furthermore, Vinothini draws a parallel between the personal and the ecological.
Landscapes in her drawings—from the remnants of her tropical homeland to the scorched forests of California—mirror her inner state.
The recurring motif of the wildfire, for instance, serves as a metaphor for both devastating loss and the transformative, regenerative energy of nature and personal survival.
Through her intimate and uncertain gestures, Vinothini invites viewers to move beyond a simple narrative into a deeper feeling, allowing them to inhabit the quiet space between memory and forgetting.
She hopes visitors leave with a sense of how beauty and loss can coexist, along with the quiet resilience that emerges after something has been burned, buried, or forgotten.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Dr. R. B. Chaudhary
