Hanusha Somasundaram

ARTIST BIO

Hanusha Somasundaram's work concerns her community as well as paper to illustrate powerful drawings both figurative and abstract. Her distinctive series using strainers and stained tea bags juxtapose the strain of the people in her community and the stains marked on their lives. Hanusha Somasunderam holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Jaffna, she hails from the up-country region of Sri Lanka and is the daughter of two tea estate workers. She began exploring her society and her own existence through paintings and unorthodox mediums that reify the paradoxes and struggles of plantation work and living. She uses materials associated with the everyday practice of drinking tea such as tea strainers, teacups, tea-bags, as well as the receipts received by tea-pluckers like her mother that calculate their wage according to the weight of tea leaves plucked.

CONCEPT

Hanusha Somasunderam’s work confronts the plight of the tea estate workers in Sri Lanka and the struggle that has been faced by their communities in the hill country for over 100 years. Somasunderam’s first-hand experience of the environment is directly translated through objects typically used for tea making. The contradiction of the contribution made by these tea-pluckers to the country’s economy only to suffer hardship in return is the essence of the artist’s work. She works on the objects as sculptural material intricately illustrating stories through imagery of places, people and objects.