O Sapato do Mestre, Masthaharage sapattu (the Master’s Shoes), 2021
video, sound, 9:30 min.
Comissioned by Aziz Sohail for the publication Scroll in partnership with Colomboscope 2021, O Sapato do Mestre, Masthaharage sapattu (the Master’s Shoes) is a video departing from a poem written in between, back and forth, Portuguese and Sinhala languages. In a few sessions of translations between Lucas Odahara and Indrakanthi Perera, the poem was composed using only Sinhala words of Portuguese origin. As the description of a scene, the poem deliberately use these loan-words in order to expose a Portuguese colonial landscape and use it as a meeting point, an intersection of both countries shared history of Portuguese colonialism through language.
*special thanks to Aziz Sohail and Indrakanthi Perera
exhibition views at Die Möglichkeit einer Insel (Berlin Art Prize), Berlin, 2022. Photo: Mizuki Kin / exhibition view at cultural center of Belgrade, 2022. Photos: Nemanja Knežević
Lucas Odahara