Artist Statement

Kumary Chiquinquira Ponnambalam is interested in the decolonized female patterns in society. She uncovers these patterns when exploring sustainable communities, and the materials they use, in rural towns and city neighbourhoods. Her folkloric illustrations build those patterns into forms, and place-based streetscapes, rituals and folklore. Her work focuses on water rituals, mental health, and the habit  of walking to get one’s needs  in a neighbourhood. Her focus is on regenerative self-care centered on lessons based on her Indian and Venezuelan family experience, and her travels.

Kumary Chiquinquira’s practice centers on the “passing” of colonial trauma. She studies colonization, whiteness and non-industrial, land-based indigenous systems. Her work is trauma-informed, with trauma management, and mindfulness. Kumary Chiquinquira naturally gravitated towards new spaces that would explain her conscious feelings of unhappiness, growing up in a primarily white populated suburban sprawl of Waterloo, Ontario. Her drawing and interdisciplinary research centers around Regenerative Economies- healing economies that can restore soils - as well as in rituals that restore the natural environment.