Running Rivers: People of Place
Kuweni Dias Mendis
20 September – 26 October 2024
Kuweni Dias Mendis, 64 Mayam series (i), 2024. Photo: Scott Chrisman
Growing up in Bibile, Sri Lanka, Kuweni Dias Mendis has long been immersed in ritual practices and ceremonies. The temples of Bibile are sites of great mystery. Through reverence and precise spiritual acts, they reveal meaning, draw commonality, and inspire higher purpose.
Guided by the Sri Lankan principles of ‘ප්රකෘති Prakuratha’ (original creation or nature) and ‘සංස්කෘත Sanskrutha’ (culture), Running Rivers: People of Place echoes the Indigenous knowledges that remain in deep relation to the environment. Here on Turrbal and Yuggera Country, the river is a vital conduit, connecting each to the land, and to each other.
This multi-sensory installation utilises the river as a symbol to explore the feminine expressions of the Sri Lankan 64 Mayam, embodying spirituality as a journey and destination. Marked by local river mud, clay, insect pigments and rhythm, Dias Mendis reconciles cultural boundaries amongst diasporic complexity.
This is an offering of the river; it is a temple and ritual space that mediates migrant forms of belonging, grounded in body and place.
Kuweni Dias Mendis, courtesy of BEMAC. Photo by Ange Costes.
Kuweni Dias Mendis is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Sri Lanka and has been based in australia since 1999. Her practice reflects on place, culture and identity through the lens of diasporic experience, working across raw mark making, Yantra (symbolic drawing from ritual art in Sri Lanka), installation, performance and film.
Her artistic approach is deeply influenced by her hybrid cultural experiences between both Sri Lanka and australia. Intersecting regenerative practice, arts activism, and cultural facilitation, Kuweni uses ritual and ceremony as vessels for her artistic manifestations.
As a migrant woman of colour on unceded lands, she uses her voice to advocate for and amplify the experiences of marginalised women through collaborative artworks, exhibitions, and participatory experiences.
Running Rivers: People of Place
Kuweni Dias Mendis
20 September – 26 October
Outer Space
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am–5pm
420 Brunswick Street,
Judith Wright Arts Centre,
Fortitude Valley, QLD
Exhibition Text
by Elena Dias Jayasinha
Elena Dias-Jayasinha is a Sri Lankan-Australian curator based in Brisbane. She holds a Bachelor of Advanced Humanities with Honours Class I in Art History from The University of Queensland. In 2022, she was awarded a University Medal. Over the past five years, she has worked at institutions including The University of Queensland Art Museum and Griffith University Art Museum. In 2020, she interned with the Asian art curatorial department at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, contributing to the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. In 2022, she curated the churchie emerging art prize, held at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Currently, Elena is Curator at Museum of Brisbane.
This exhibition has support from Jordan at MBE West End, and opening support from Altitude 701 & Felons Brewing.