Thirumeni is part of the Mount Studio Analogue Film Lab One-Year Anniversary Programme and presents the debut exhibition of Ajiththaman, a young photographer from Point Pedro, Jaffna, and a final-year BFA student at the Sir Ponnampalam Ramanathan Faculty of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Jaffna. 

Ajiththaman’s photographic practice explores the body as a form of expression and a carrier of memory, looking at emotions, personal experiences, family histories, social divisions, cultural practices, and the spaces that hold these memories. 

Ajiththaman joined Mount Studio as an intern during his final year of studies, where he developed his practice and engaged with the studio’s programmes and community. Thirumeni is an opportunity to introduce his work to a wider audience in Colombo and support his next steps as an emerging artist. 

Supporting Ajithaman 

Mount Studio is taking no commission from the sale of these photographs. All proceeds from the sales will go directly to Ajithaman. The intention is to help him travel to Colombo, build professional networks, participate in future programmes and opportunities, and continue developing his practice and career as an artist. 

For an emerging artist, these small steps can make a meaningful difference. By purchasing a work, you are not only supporting the artist financially but also helping create the possibility for his practice to continue growing beyond this exhibition. 

Print Sizes & Purchase 

The photographs are available in three different print sizes. Collectors may also choose their preferred size, and we can produce the selected photograph accordingly, with the price adjusted based on the final size. To purchase a photograph, please send a screenshot of your payment receipt along with your name and contact details via WhatsApp (+94781047921). We will then confirm your order and arrange the printing. 

Available sizes and Prices: 42cmx59.4 (A2) = 35,000.00LKR  / 29.7x42cm (A3) = 18,000.00LKR  / 21x29.7cm (A4)  = 10,000.00LKR

Account information:  Mount Studio, Nations Trust Bank, Boralesgamuwa Branch, Acc No 200750054685, SWIFT Code: NTBCLKLX 

THIRUMENI 

Photography by Ajiththaman 

Sound response by Dinelka Liyanage

 Curated by Lojithan Ram 

திருமேனி (Thirumeni) can be understood as sacred body, revered form, or holy physical form. The word carries a sense of respect towards the body and its presence. In this exhibition, the title becomes a way of thinking about the body—not only as a physical form, but as something that carries memory, emotion, history, identity, and experience.

 Thirumeni is the debut solo exhibition of Ajiththaman, a young photographer from Point Pedro, Jaffna, and a student of the Sir Ponnampalam Ramanathan Faculty of Performing and Visual Arts, University of Jaffna. Ajiththaman’s photographic practice begins with the body. He is interested in how emotions such as love, loneliness, conflict, separation, understanding, and togetherness can be expressed without words. Through shapes, gestures, movements, and postures, the body can communicate feelings that language sometimes cannot. 

He photographs people in moments where their bodies naturally become expressive, while also asking friends to perform or recreate certain gestures and situations for the camera. The bodies in his photographs are not defined by age or gender. They become forms through which different emotional and personal experiences can be explored. But the body in Thirumeni is not only human. Ajiththaman also looks at architectural bodies—houses, walls, abandoned structures, village spaces, and other built environments. These spaces become silent witnesses to generations of living. They carry traces of the people who lived there, the things that happened there, and the memories that remain after those moments have passed. 

His photographs are also connected to his own childhood and to stories passed down through his family and community. Growing up in Point Pedro, Ajiththaman encountered memories of village life, traditional practices, cultural heritage, and the effects of the civil war and its aftermath. One such family story is about his father being attacked by the Indian Peace Keeping Force while returning home from work several decades ago, during the unsettled period of the civil war in Sri Lanka. Stories like this, even when experienced through memory and retelling rather than directly witnessed, become part of how a person understands their family and the place they come from. 

Ajiththaman also brings into his work the traditional performative practices and village life he grew up around. These memories exist alongside more difficult experiences of social division and caste discrimination. Caste has been a particularly personal experience for Ajiththaman. He became aware of discrimination between his own neighbourhood and surrounding communities, where people were judged according to their family background, occupation, and place of origin. His father’s occupation and their social background became reasons for others to define and discriminate against the family. This experience adds another meaning to the title Thirumeni. If the body is sacred, revered, and worthy of respect, what happens when society begins to judge a person through their body, family, occupation, or social position? Who is allowed to be respected, and who is made to feel lesser? Through his photographs, Ajiththaman does not attempt to answer these questions directly. Instead, he observes bodies, gestures, spaces, memories, and relationships, allowing them to speak for themselves. 

The exhibition brings together the personal body, the social body, and the architectural body. They become different carriers of memory—holding experiences of intimacy and separation, joy and trauma, belonging and exclusion. For Thirumeni, Dinelka Liyanage responds to Ajiththaman’s photographs through sound, creating another layer of interpretation. The sound does not simply illustrate the photographs but enters into a conversation with them, allowing the exhibition to move between image, memory, atmosphere, and emotion. Thirumeni is ultimately an exploration of how bodies and places remember. It looks at what is visible and what remains hidden, at the memories we inherit and those we experience ourselves, and at the ways our bodies and surroundings continue to carry stories long after the moment has passed. 

Through this debut exhibition, Ajiththaman invites us to look at the body not simply as a physical form, but as something revered, experienced, judged, remembered, and continuously shaped by the world around it.