Cocking, Aiming, and Hitting
Thiseni Kristhorubadu
See it On Campus: Level 1
John C. Kerr Chancellor Emeritus Awards for Excellence in Visual Arts – Winner
Cocking, Aiming, and Hitting, tempera paint stick and spray paint on canvas perforated with firearms, 5 x 4 feet each, 2024
Process
Cocking, Aiming, and Hitting engages with the colonial archive through research conducted at the UBC Rare Books and Speacial Collections library, drawing on Ceylon and the Cingalese (1850) by Henry Charles Sirr and Account of the island of Ceylon (1803) by Robert Percival. The work examines colonial representations of Sinhala women during the British colonial era of Sri Lanka, incorporating interventions informed by Édouard Glissant’s concept of opacity. Operating across three levels of comprehension—those who only read English, those who read both Sinhala and English, and those who only read Sinhala—the work examines the lasting impact of the European colonial enterprise on Sinhala culture and values today.
Related Works
Section 365A, tempera paint stick on canvas and oil on canvas, 2025
Section 365A (Book), embroidery on canvas, 2025
Artist Biography
My name is Thiseni Kristhorubadu and I am an interdisciplinary artist based on the territories of the Coast Salish peoples: the Katzie, the Kwantlen and the Semiahmoo First Nations. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Curatorial Practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
My works operate either as a response to external occurrences or as a visual manifestation of my quest to answer the question, “Why?” I am deeply interested in the historical moment of decolonization for numerous peoples and lands occupied by European colonial enterprises, and the decision many made to violently create ethnonationalist states after gaining independence. I work with the colonial archive and familial memory to understand how we arrived at the current moment and to consider the other possible paths of decolonization we could have taken and can still take.
