Homecoming
Kuweni Dias Mendis and Grant X Wilkes
- Sitter: Kuweni Dias Mendis
- Medium: Digital photograph printed in cyanotype, toned with Sri Lankan tea and eucalyptus on washi paper, painted with handmade indigo pigment paste, soft pastel, and stitched with 24 karat gold thread and indigo dyed silk thread.
- Dimensions: 70cm x 100cm
- Representation: This artist represents themselves
2025 Packer's Prize
Proudly supported by
Howard Smith Wharves
2025 Metro Arts Experimental Prize
Proudly supported by
Metro Arts
About the artwork
In this portrait, Sri Lankan Australian artist Kuweni Dias Mendis is shown standing in the waters of Back Creek near her home in Beechmont, Queensland. It was here that she reconnected with her cultural identity with the guidance of Wangerriburra and Mununjali elders, after moving to Australia at the age of 19 and spending many years trying to assimilate.
“The river is where Kuweni finds her pulse of place. In Sri Lankan tradition, women wear the diya redda (bathing cloth) and use the sembuwa (water pot) to bathe, letting their hair down in liberation and surrender to the river’s flow. For Grant X Wilkes, this collaborative portrait denies artistic ego and colonial notions of photographic authorship. Homecoming is a portrait made with Kuweni, not of her. It honours rivers as sacred spaces within each of us.”
The botanical toning of the cyanotype print using Sri Lankan tea and Australian eucalyptus further reflects Dias Mendis’ journey to reconnect with a decolonised sense of self.
About the artist
Kuweni Dias Mendis is a Sri Lankan Australian multidisciplinary artist working across drawing, performance, film, installation and soundscapes. Brisbane based Grant X Wilkes is a collaborative partnership between Claire Grant and Lee Wilkes. They use experimental photography to explore new techniques combining historic and digital processes to push the boundaries of traditional image making.
