Luka Alagiyawanna

Photograph © Luka Alagiyawanna

Luka Alagiyawanna, who has a Sri Lankan-German family background, graduated from Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule with a Bachelor of Arts in Photography. Her practice explores identity and its entanglement with physiology, individual aspirations, and personal objects.

Her work has adopted portraiture as its primary means of documenting narrative. By inviting the subjects of her photographs in the series From This Point Forward (2014) and Hinterhof (2012) to intervene upon prints of their own portraits, with various forms of mark-making, Alagiyawanna’s process champions their ownership in the presentation of personal journeys. Ocean Cyanotypes (2018), commissioned by and featured at Colomboscope, continues to engage with these questions of ownership and narrative, yet leans further toward abstraction. The series considers the context of larger societal systems, local practices, and the ways in which these are linked to ecological devastation.

This bio was provided by the artist. A more comprehensive profile will be forthcoming.