Sukhun

Hania Luthufi conceptualised Sukhun at a moment when she is approaching her practice with a sudden and heightened awareness of the roles that silence, suspension and breath play in music at large. As she ponders upon what it means to return home, to return to nothingness, to emptiness, to relief, her words dissolve into silence, into breath, into heartbeat and back into silence again. This work sonically frames the overwhelming silence and absence that seeps in when faced with the inarticulable feeling that exceeds the capacity of linguistic structures.

Due to Covid-19 protocols, the work cannot be experienced over headphones at the exhibition space, as the artist intended. We encourage you to access the audio via the following QR code to listen to on your personal devices.

Hania Luthufi is a vocalist and music educator currently based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her interest in using the voice began with quirath (also spelled qirat) in her childhood, choral music in school; later, she moved to exploring and receiving informal training in jazz vocals. After that, Luthufi delved into Hindustani classical music at Viswa Bharati in Santiniketan and stayed on in Bengal to obtain a Master’s in the same field at Calcutta University. Luthufi's recent work comprises of abstract, cinematic music compositions exploring the vast possibilities of drone music.
Her last album invited a gathering of musicians from disparate coastal regions to come together and musically interpret various temperaments of the sea. Hania is currently researching dialects of Arabic and Tamil through lost devotional songs from fishing communities in the coastal regions of Sri Lanka. More recently, Hania’s works were a part of ‘Sea Change’, Colomboscope 2019, curated by Natasha Ginwala. She has also contributed to ‘Held Apart Together’, a digital program for Colomboscope 2021, Language is Migrant.