Themes of Endurance

(The Jaffna Public Library—Personal Narratives)

I created a zine called, Themes of Endurance, and an interactive site providing personal and historical context to a beloved heritage site with a complex history, the Jaffna Public Library, located in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

The zine follows three perspectives, my two uncles and my father, as they recount memories and personal experiences attached to the library, intertwining narratives surrounding the Sri Lankan Civil Conflict, and the subsequent burning of the Jaffna Public Library. It is bi-translated in English and Tamil, a langauge spoken in Sri Lanka, and an ethnic group that experienced the civil conflict at its height; the Tamil perspective is the one I am choosing to highlight in this overall project.

The site utilizes library themes and the use of book stacking to organize an interactive timeline of the events that surrounded the library in its inception, its burning, and its restoration. This objective timeline recounts the history of the site through the lense of the civil war and how the war and the oppression of the minority group, Tamil people, tied to the destruction of educational materials.

ADOBE INDESIGN, FIGMA

TIMELINE - 3 WEEKS

DELIVERABLES - 5 ZINE EDITIONS, INTERACTIVE SITE PROTOTYPE

BRANDING + INTERACTIVE + PRINT + ADVOCACY

^[1] The Zine—

Scans and images of the zine showcase a risographed cover utilizing yellow construction paper and green riso ink, cut hole in the center to expose the patterned pages inside, and a perfect stitch bound spine. Patterned pages represent the patterns of my mothers sari (traditional South Asian wear) collection, gradient mapped and reworked to fit the color contexts present in each section. The bi-translated text in Tamil was done in collaboration with Kan Suseenthiran, an unimaginable undertaking that I am deeply grateful for.

^[2] Interactive Site Walkthrough—

The site walks the user through a historical timeline of the library. It utilizes the illustration of the library itself on top of a stack of books and one palm leaf manuscript meant to represent the very early history of the library. A palm leaf manuscript was the old manner of recording knowledge and documenting. Carved letterforms on dried palm leaves held together by thread carried very early Sri Lankan history and all that documentation, irreplaceable and significant, was destroyed in the 1981 burning. Each book opens to showcase plaques of information respective to the sector of time it corresponds to.

*The proptype is rough and has some small glitches but provides a holistic view of what this could look like at higher fidelity.