Sri Lankan Architect Minnette de Silva (1918-1998) and a Modern Architecture of the Past

FAIN: FT-286221-22

Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi
Barnard College (New York, NY 10027-6909)

Research and writing leading to a book about Sri Lankan architect Minnette de Silva (1918-1998), modern architecture, and cultural heritage.

Minnette de Silva and a Modern Architecture of the Past is a book manuscript that contends with the politics and aesthetics of heritage through the study of a singular intellectual and creative career shaped by violent upheaval in Asia. By focusing on visually precise objects and new custodians of history, it aims to refine languages for thinking about politics and the problematic global promise of the modern, through architecture, feminist imaginations, communal violence, and ideological confrontation. My paradoxical formulation, “a modern architecture of the past,” unlocks complex heritage debates illuminated in the work of the eponymous subject in international settings and within postcolonial Sri Lanka, in which claims upon select pasts became the basis for linguistic, cultural, and territorial wars. The NEH Summer Stipend will support the culmination of research and completion of a scholarly book.