The following conversation took place on May 17, 2024, between Shivanjani Lal in Sydney, on Gadigal Land (which is the indigenous place for people who have been living here for many thousands of Years), and Cécile Bourne-Farrell is in London. It has been revised at the occasion of my visit to the artist at The Cité des Arts in Paris, october 2024, where she was in residency preparing her participation to Sharjah biennale 2025.

Shivanjani Lal (https://shivanjanilal.com/) is a Fijian-Australian artist and curator whose work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss.

Recent works have used story-telling, objects and video to account for lost stories of Girmitiya (Indenture)  from the Indian and Pacific oceans. Truth-telling and monument making has become a focal point of her current research in an attempt to decipher what is lost and the possibilities of futures.

Between 2017-18, Lal sought to globalise her practice with a prolonged stay in India, which led to periods of research in Nepal, Bangladesh and Fiji. She was the 2019 Create New South Wales Visual Arts Emerging Fellow, and the 2020 Georges Mora Fellow. In 2021 she graduated with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London with a Masters in Artists Film and Moving Image. In 2023 she received the QAGOMA Vida Lahey Scholarship. Lal’s work has been exhibited across Australia, and internationally.

This interview was first published by Arts Cabinet, in Arts Cabinet Interview Series, December 2024

https://www.artscabinet.org/interviews/interview-between-shivanjani-lal-and-cecile-bourne-farrell

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