NINA JAYASURIYA

Resident November 2024

Born in 1996 in Paris, Nina Jayasuriya lives and works between Paris and Sri Lanka.

Nina Jayasuriya's artistic practice explores the use of everyday objects, the exploitation of sacredness, and the reappropriation of heritage, in the continuous creation of personal environments and myths.

A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2023 with honors from the jury, she won the 2024 Sisley Prize and has participated in several group exhibitions, including Temps Z at Galerie Mennour, Paris (2024); Ailleurs est ce rêve proche (...), Magasin CNAC, Grenoble (2023); and Autohistorias, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Beaux-Arts de Paris (2023).

"My work occupies the porous interstices of territories close to me: from Paris, my hometown, I question my Sri Lankan and Spanish cultural heritage in a context of globalization and observe the evolution of modes of circulation and transformations linked to tourism. Shaping clay, using incense, natural dyes, and ancient painting techniques, I reactivate traditions within contemporary rituals. I play with the tension of oppositions to reconcile our daily, sometimes absurd, contradictions: the profane and the sacred, the precious and the precarious, the material and the spiritual. I seek to reconstruct affective spaces that allow us to establish and maintain a personal relationship with the sacred."