THEYVAPAALAN JAYARATNAM
PARALLELS
GMBB Level 2 11AM - 7PM
With this project, I would like to draw parallels between the memories sealed in my body and the space where they were birthed. It is a study and record of the physicality and sense of memory of the spaces I grew up and juxtapose them against self-portraits of my body in the present.
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I am hoping to discover a relationship between the spaces I grew up during my formative years (0 - 15 years) and the person or image that I am today.
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Parallels as a project is beneficial to the community because it is important for Tamil transgender stories to be told. There is very little recorded history or documentation of bodies like mine and for future iterations, I can see this method of study being planted in other marginalised communities.
Theyvapaalan Jayaratnam is a Tamil nonbinary transgender being. As a multidisciplinary artist, Theyvapaalan was grounded in performance, photography and film.
Some of the notable credits include Riwayat (2017); SIX (2018) a devised play about the dissecting and stopping of time and the passing of one's father; Skin and Flowers (2018), T H R E E (2018) as part of Tiga 3 by Five Arts Centre, Plays Without Words or Action (2019) and S K I N (2021), a poetic documentary which was co-created and co-produced by Theyvapaalan.
The most recent ventures include த Thannir (2022), a single-channel video projected on mixed
media about the murder of A. Ganapathy for the Ilham Art Show created with Samuel Tin alongside Syamsul Azhar and Fahmi Sani; and translating interviews into photographs for Site and Space in Southeast Asia, a research project funded by the Getty Foundation.
