Hema Shironi

ARTIST BIO

Hema Shironi’s wide-ranging artistic practice combines embroidery, mythological imagery, bricolage, and installation to inquire concepts of cultural identity. Her work is deeply rooted in observance of the history of colonization, civil war, displacement and migration, which she highlights through personal stories and experiences of living in Sri Lanka. As a child, her family often moved from one place to another and she eventually found herself questioning the bonds that communities and individuals make. Her work is driven by the nostalgia of the numerous places she has called home and how each community belonging to those places grapples with concerns of language, culture, memory, myth, gender, and equality. Hema Shironi (b. 1991, Sri Lanka) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives in Killinochchi. She completed her MFA at Beaconhouse National University Lahore in 2019. Her work has been featured at the Critical Zones conceived by ZKM, Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2022, Sri Lanka) and at Colomboscope (2019 and 2022, Sri Lanka). In 2021 she completed an Artist Residency at House of Kal, Colombo.