Sola Arts News

Festival31 2025 Artist in Residence: Kirushan Sivagnanam

Kirushan Sivagnanam is one of the Artists commissioned as part of this year's Festival31 programme. You can find out more about the residences here: https://festival31.co.uk/artist-residencies/.

Hi, I’m Kirushan Sivagnanam. I’m from Sri Lanka and currently based in Merseyside, Liverpool, in the UK.

My art practice is based on my lived experience, especially themes of displacement, transformation, and ongoing questions of identity. I don’t work in a single medium, because each place I’ve moved through speaks to me differently. Sometimes I work through performance, sometimes through installation, or materials that reflect the space I’m in. Each medium I choose tells a different story connected to that atmosphere.

I’m currently part of the SoloArts 31st Festival Residency Program. I’m collaborating with Claire Weetman, an artist based on Merseyside in the uk. Together, we’re exploring identity and borders.

I’m really happy to be part of the  SOLA Arts Festival 31 Residency Programme. It gives me the freedom to express the themes that are central to my work and engage deeply with these ideas in a supportive, collaborative space.

You can see more of Kirushan's work on his Instagram profile: 

https://www.instagram.com/kirushan_sivagnanam/

We can't wait to see what he and Claire make during their residency.  Below are some  examples of Kirushan's previous work, along with his descriptions of them: 

Title: All Ceylon
Series: Nightmare
Medium: Mixed media (clothes, resin, acrylic,)
Artist: Kirushan Sivangnanam,
Dimensions: 128 cm x 69 cm
Year: 2023

All Ceylon is part of my Nightmare series and is rooted in my lived experience, especially moments of displacement, transformation, and isolation. The work reflects how memory and identity are shaped by the things we leave behind. I used clothes as a central material, which are no longer wearable once sealed in resin. This change is important; it transforms something soft and familiar into something hard and unreachable. For me, the resin represents time and memory: it freezes, distorts, and preserves. All Ceylon is about what is lost, what is held in silence, and how identity can be suspended between past and present.

Title: Nightmares LC 2.58am
Series: Nightmare
Medium: Mixed media (cloth, resin, acrylic, canvas)
Artist: Kirushan Sivagnanam
Size: 297 cm × 144 cm
Year: 2022

Nightmares LC 2.58am is one of the works in my Nightmare series. It doesn’t speak of sleeplessness, it speaks of something deeper, the kind of nightmare that can’t be imagined, even with open eyes. It is the landscape of living with it, not escaping it. This piece was born in a space where day and night blur, where memories and thoughts strike at once. It may appear like a physical landscape, but it reflects only the unrest within.
I used cloth, resin, acrylic, and canvas to explore that shift, how something soft and close to the body becomes fixed, hardened, unreachable. The cloth, once wearable, is sealed in resin. It’s preserved, but lifeless. Resin for me is like memory under pressure; it holds on, distorts, and refuses to let go.
This work isn’t shaped by dreams but by a vision that lives on constantly. It’s not about the body, but the emotional space the body carries. The feeling of walking through thoughts that never end. Of living inside a landscape that no one else can see.