An Unatlas of Coconut #2

An Unatlas of Coconut was developed following a recent research trip to Sri Lanka and India. While there, Hameed explored how in their very DNA structure, coconuts can be seen to recapitulate histories of indigenous migration and colonial extraction across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Through a series of screen prints, and cyanotypes this work depicts coconuts in the urban life of Sri Lanka, as well as through their origin myths, cellular structure, and circulation. Drawing on her previous video works, the artist regards the series as a form of montage. Together the images portray a fragmented landscape, moving down from the sky towards the coconut trees, coconut plantations, and coconut husks stacked eerily upon the ground. In these images, manifestations of colonial violence are expressed through a loss of information in the highly contrasted images, as well as by marked gaps that are perhaps missing or yet to be filled in. An Unatlas of Coconut #2 is a triptych of cynaotypes with coconut myths and rituals handwritten by Hameed on their margins, accompanied by sounds recorded on site of a Sri Lankan coconut estate during the harvest, with the sounds of the sea and city that surrounds the trees.

An Untatlas of Coconut #1 and #2 were made possible through a Kone Foundation Research Fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

Commissioned by Zeitz MOCCA for the exhibition Indigo Waves and Other Stories, 2022.