By Subha Wijesiriwardena & Shermal Wijewardene
This essay is part of a series titled, ‘Challenging Visual Depiction of Women and Sexual Violence in Southasia’ published by The Southasia Trust. Editorial support was provided by Laxmi Murthy, Director and Pawas Manandhar, Program Manager, Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, an initiative of The Southasia Trust, Kathmandu. This article is available for free download and reproduction for educational and other non-commercial purposes. For any commercial reproduction, permission must be obtained from The South Asia Trust
This essay foregrounds the significance of visual and discursive protest strategies in feminist campaigns against sexual and gender-based violence in Sri Lanka. Visual imagery has been ubiquitous in the mode by which some Sri Lankan women’s organisations and individual activists have tried to influence public opinion on the subject. There have been recent efforts to curate, publicly exhibit and preserve visual campaign material analog and digital forms. Despite this prominence, there is a dearth of research on how visual modes have historically been used by feminist activists or by women’s groups in Sri Lanka.
To address this gap in knowledge, this essay conducts a preliminary analysis of visual strategies and politics in a selection of interventions against sexual and gender-based violence. The scope is narrowed to three recognisable interventions, involving a key feminist women’s rights organisation and some individual activists, to allow for a focused discussion. The essay begins with a brief overview of Sri Lankan feminist activism on sexual and gender-based violence, accompanied by a survey of existing research.
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Subha Wijesiriwardena is a feminist activist and researcher who has worked on gender, sexuality and digital rights in Sri Lanka and South Asia. Most recently, her work has focused on countering anti-gender and antidemocracy agendas globally and on building crossmovement strategies to challenge punitive laws, policies and practices. Subha has a degree in Communication Studies from the University of Bangalore and has been published in print and online. Her previous research has included work on abortion, gender, sexuality and the internet, and feminist debates on porn in Sri Lanka. Subha is the Co-Chair of the inaugural Advisory Committee of Act Together for Inclusion (ACTIF), funded y the Canadian government to promote and protect the human rights of LGBTIQ persons. Subha lives in New York City.
Shermal Wijewardene is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She holds an MPhil in English Studies from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Gender Studies from Monash University. Her research focuses on the politics of gender and sexuality in literature, cinema, the media, and social movements, as well as on human rights work, and feminist activism. She has co-authored Human Rights Practice in Sri Lanka : Towards a Thick Description (2014) with Vijay K. Nagaraj, and 3D Things: Devices, Technologies, and Women’s Organizing in Sri Lanka (2015) with Kumudini Samuel. Shermal has been Chair of the Board of Directors of the Colombo-based feminist organization, the Women and Media Collective, and has engaged with activism at the intersections of feminism and LGBTIQ politics in various capacities for over twenty years. Her recent research on how Sri Lankan newspaper narratives trope the criminality of lesbian and gender non-conforming identities is published in The Journal of Lesbian Studies.
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