installation view

Visitors engaging with the deceremony performance and art works

A set of 80 ceramic containers | 2024

These ceramic containers made with sgraffito and underglaze painting, filled with a tea concoction, are a part of the interactive installation of the project Meh Mal. The story embedded in mark making and symbols on the ceramic surface comes to life with a ritualistic step-by-step ceremony performed by the visitors.

Meh Mal is a speculative exploration of fictional islands of the past ravaged by the capitalist tea trade, where resource exploitation leads to their submersion under rising seas. The project critiques the erasure of oral histories, deemed valid only when academically sanctioned, through a parafictional narrative. Viewers engage with this decolonial allegory via a participatory deceremony, a ritualistic tea performance, while episodic paintings and prints unfold the islands’ tragic fate. Blending fiction and critique, the work exposes the violence of extraction and the fragility of cultural memory, inviting reflection on loss, complicity, and the power of reclaiming narrative.