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Tashiya de Mel

Photographer | Image-based Practitioner
   
To Taste a Bittersweet History
Thesis_Final_TDM.pdf 18 MB
Public Project
To Taste a Bittersweet History
Copyright Tashiya de Mel 2024
Updated Jul 2024
Topics Media
As someone who grew up in Sri Lanka and lives in the Netherlands today, I am intrigued by how differently the Dutch-Sri Lankan colonial history is remembered; the history is absent from mainstream narratives on the Dutch colonial empire, while in Sri Lanka this period is associated with bittersweet nostalgia.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) colonised Sri Lanka between 1658 and 1796. In their efforts to secure a monopoly on the cinnamon trade they transformed the landscape and culture of Sri Lanka, leaving traces visible today. I use the historical importance of cinnamon as a point of departure, to generate a critical dialogue that unpacks some of the forgotten stories and violent histories from this period.
 
‘To taste a bittersweet history’ is an ongoing project that brings together collective and personal memory to offer new ways of engaging with a complex and nuanced history and explores how visual media can be used to address colonial legacies.

You can read more about the research in my thesis 'Unarchiving Colonial Narratives'. A shorter version of my research process is published in the FOMU Trigger magazine essay, ‘Remembering to forget/forgetting to remember’.

Parts of this research was showcased at the MA Photography and Society graduation show at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in July 2024.


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