Where Are You From?

Sri Lankan photographer Menika van der Poorten’s exhibit at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014, Where Are You From? (2012) documents the stories of the dwindling Eurasian ‘planter’ community of Sri Lanka. Much like the Anglo-Indians of India, Sri Lanka’s Eurasians were born out of colonial era interactions between Europeans, especially the British, and the native Sinhalese and Tamil population. Not accepted as fully European but set apart from other Sri Lankans by their light skin and Anglicised lifestyles, Eurasians have progressively retreated into the margins of Sri Lanka’s public sphere. The country’s independence and a 1956-declaration replacing English with Sinhala as its official language resulted in mass migrations to England—which many Eurasians consider their true home—as well as countries such as Canada. Those who chose to remain in Sri Lanka now constitute a minority community whose struggles to belong in a nation increasingly intolerant to differences prompts the artist’s loaded question–Where are you from?

To Van der Poorten, herself a Eurasian descended from Belgian and English forbearers, the series is only one part of a deeply personal and ongoing endeavor to archive an aspect of Sri Lankan history that she fears will soon be lost forever. She began to interview and photograph members of the largely elusive Eurasian community, including the members of her own extended family, in 2011. The resultant images and testimonies form intimate portraits of a people straddling two worlds, and are chronicles of a long history of intercontinental interactions in South Asia.