Introduction

Theyvapaalan S. Jayaratnam is a transdisciplinary artist from Malaysia whose practice explores the polyvalent manifestations of the digital image and its relationship to significant histories. She graduated from the Department of Performance and Media at Sunway University and made her professional debut with riwayat at the George Town Festival in 2017. Her works and collaborations have since been presented in Russia, Indonesia, South Korea, France, and Thailand.

Notable projects include S K I N (2021), a poetic documentary she co-created and co-produced; THANNIR (2022), a collaborative video sculpture responding to the custodial death of A. Ganapathy; LARTRINALIA 66.6 (2023), in which speculative reflections take the form of prototype images evoking a series of neo-colonial bathroom artworks; and EKANGGAL / இணைகள் (2023), a self-portrait triptych weaving together oral histories and sense-memory photography.

Grounded in glitch-feminist strategies, a Kali-inspired Bataillean headspace, and non-hierarchical modes of collaboration, her practice forges new archives of Southeast Asian queer and trans memory.