Vinoja Tharmalingam

Vinoja Tharmalingam was born in Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka. She studied drawing and painting at Swami Vipulananda Institute of Aesthetic Studies (SVIAS) graduating at the top of her class with the degree Bachelor of Fine Arts (2017). She currently teaches on the undergraduate program at the Department of Visual and Technological Arts, SVIAS, Eastern University, Sri Lanka. She is an active member of Artists for Non-violent Living Collective which exhibits widely in the country and seeks to engage ordinary audiences and those affected by the issues that the artworks show. Vinoja is determined to bring out the stories of those who are most affected and marginalized strongly believing in both the healing and transformative powers of artwork and community.

Vinoja’s trajectory as an artist is shaped by migration and emigration that has been a natural part of her journey since childhood. Vinoja was six when her family decided to go to India by boat. That evening they heard people crying loudly- a boat had flipped over and people fell into the waters. Twenty- five ordinary people died on that day. The next morning Vinoja and her family got on the same boat and left for India. They returned to Sri Lanka seven years later.

At present Vinoja has been making embroidered drawings on fabric. She describes her technique as stitching that we see in the stitched drawings that she is presenting for Tonight No Poetry Will Serve. Titled Differently able 2020 and Border 2020 these drawings are formed out of the running stitch on cotton. They are like maps. At the same time, the spatial dimension is interwoven such that it is simultaneously aerial and planar. These views could equally be from the window of a refugee camp trying to imagine a free and happy world just beyond the barbed wire fence. According to the artist, the armed ethnic conflict/ civil war may have officially ended in 2009- in its aftermath there remains a population that has been crippled for more than three decades. As a result of the conflict, ordinary people have had to face all manner of tragedies, displacement from home and life in temporary shelters without basic amenities. There is the continuous worry to protect children. And there remains the dispute over the disappearance of thousands of people in war, and this matter remains unresolved.

Vinoja’s recent exhibitions are Exploring identities and histories: Looking at Ourselves, Future of Peace, Kilinochchi and Jaffna (2021), A Timeless Heritage, Tolworth Recreation Centre, Fuller’s Way North, UK (2020), Differently able, Non-Violent Living Artist Group and OBR, Batticaloa, Kilinochchi and the University of Jaffna (2017-20), Expressing Post War Struggles through Painting, Art Gallery, SVIAS, Eastern University, Sri Lanka (2017), Disability, Karaittivu, Batticaloa (2017), Disabled, Visual and Performing Arts, University of Colombo (2016) and Disabled, Main Hall, KN/Kilinochchi Central College (2015).

Vinoja Tharmalingam’s new body of work will be shown at the forthcoming edition of Colomboscope in 2022. She lives and works in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.