Sri Lankan born NI artist Anushiya Sundaralingam will be presenting her latest work ‘Re Root’, at the Crescent Arts Centre on Thursday 29 May at 6pm.

After relocating from Sri Lanka to the UK in the late 1980s Anushiya’s art practice explored issues of belonging. She is concerned with how our relationship with the natural and cultural environment shapes our sense of self and place and how, when our surroundings change, through displacement we require unprecedented responses and adaptation.

Her practice is varied and includes two-dimensional and three-dimensional works. She incorporates a diverse range of media to reflect the intricate and layered nature of community and belonging, and the complex nature of identity and place.
‘Re Root’ builds on the ‘Root’ exhibition (Belfast Print Workshop, 2013) and explores the metaphor of ’embodiment’: the ‘self’ in cultural transition and the challenges of identity. In the work, delicate dresses, constructed from saree fabrics, are woven and re-worked to indicate the complexity of the past and the necessity of a shared future. The original sarees have passed through generations and are given new life and meaning. The marks made, clothes worn and lives lived reverberate with the tensions of past and present, of traditional identity in the flux of transition.

Anushiya’s work has been included in fifteen solo exhibitions including Sri Lanka, Ireland and Australia, as well as over seventy group shows. She has received numerous awards and special commissions, and her work is represented in many public and private collections.

Previews Thurs 29 May & Thurs 5 June 6-9pm and runs until 28 June at the Crescent Arts Centre. For further details T: 028 90 242338 E: info@crescentarts.org or W: www.crescentarts.org