LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR

Dear Reader,

It’s our first Newsletter of 2025, and already there’s a great deal to celebrate.

In December, Everystory launched a powerful video series, ‘Day In The Life’, and in February, we collaborated with Fearless Collective to create a new mural with five of the Fearless Ambassadors in Colombo, and took part in the Fearless Feast. From now through April, we will explore the intersection of food, feminism, and community through our theme, ‘On Cooking, Agency, Resistance, Community’.

With all this and more underway, this newsletter explores the idea of creativity as a form of activism: whether in a kitchen, an artist’s studio, or in the act of passing down intangible heritage from one generation to another.

Our newsletter makes for eclectic reading, viewing and listening, and we hope that there’s plenty here to pique your interest. I wish you happy reading and look forward to your thoughts and feedback at [email protected]!

In solidarity,
Chathuni Uduwela
Guest Editor - 2025 Issue I

LAUNCH OF THE
‘DAY IN THE LIFE’
VIDEO SERIES

In December, Everystory launched the 'Day In The Life' video series, an audio-visual campaign that captures the everyday resilience of women in Sri Lanka who have shaped or been shaped by the country’s political, cultural, and social contexts. This series showcases women's everyday lives, documenting their routines, challenges, reflections, and the ways they resist oppression through their daily actions.

The pilot edition of the series follows three Sri Lankan sportswomen, highlighting their training regimens, domestic responsibilities, and the politics that intersect with their sports work. As we expand this work, future iterations of the Day In The Life series will feature women from diverse professions and backgrounds, including politics, the arts, and activism.

ART AS RESISTANCE:
RECLAIMING SPACE
THROUGH CREATIVITY

Everystory x Fearless Collective

We recently collaborated with the Fearless Collective, an initiative that creates public art with women and misrepresented communities worldwide.

Our partnership was centered around a workshop at Lakmahal Community Library which took place on February 12th, 2025.  The primary focus of the workshop was supporting their new mural project at the Rio Hotel in Slave Island.

The workshop brought together our community of creators—illustrators, writers, artists, and translators—who work to create social change througgh their art. Their stories directly inspired the mural, which features portraits of five women from our community.

This collaboration reinforced our belief that storytelling functions as advocacy, creating spaces for reflection on shared experiences. The theme for the mural, which was also explored during our workshop, was the intersection between feminism and creativity.

We sought to explore how art, as a medium for storytelling, can be used in advocacy. This aligned directly with our ethos at Everystory Lanka which focuses on how the intimacy of storytelling establishes a core pillar of all activism-empathy.

Having unveiled our latest mural with Fearless Collective, we reflect on other instances when art played a crucial role in spurring resistance movements.

ON COOKING: AGENCY,
RESISTANCE, COMMUNITY

OUR THEME FROM FEBRUARY TO APRIL 2025

The theme explores the intricate intersection of food, feminism, and community through the lens of women's complex relationships with cooking and kitchen spaces. It illuminates how food preparation and sharing have become powerful tools in feminist activism and community building, while critically examining the persistent patriarchal associations between women and domestic labour.

THIS MONTH
WE’RE READING

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

A mother leaves her children an unlikely inheritance: a Caribbean dessert in the freezer, and a recording of her life story, quite unlike the version they heard growing up. In grieving their mother, the siblings begin to unpack their own identities and forge a stronger relationship.

THIS MONTH
WE’RE WATCHING

The Great Indian Kitchen

Dubbed in 2021 by the Hindustan Times as ‘the most powerful film on patriarchy in recent years’, The Great Indian Kitchen follows the day-to-day life of a newly-married woman as she tries to assimilate into her husband’s family. Grappling with her husband’s and in-laws’ expectations, the wife (unnamed in the film) must choose to make a stand: change herself, or bring about a change in her new family?

Originally a Malayalam film, The Great Indian Kitchen has since had several remakes, including in Tamil.

THIS MONTH 
WE’RE DOING

Voices from an Archived Silence - Transoceanic Exchanges

Voices from an archived silence - transoceanic exchanges (2023-2025) by Studio for Memory Politics bring together artists from Colombo and Karachi to explore cultural memory and erasures in postcolonial histories. This exhibition will be on display at Studio Kayamai from 27th February to 5th March.

Aligning with our theme from Febaruary to April—On Cooking: Agency, Resistance, Community—we look at the works by artists Firi Rahman and Sophia Balagamwala who have looked at food as a living record of displacement and adaptation.

For Sophia Balagamwala, the kitchen is where identity is passed down through flavors, gestures, and unspoken lessons. In Time in the Kitchen, she traces Memon recipes like Khaosuey, revealing how migration has shaped cuisine. Collecting and transcribing family recipes, she uncovers histories of movement, trade, and the unseen labor embedded in everyday meals.

In Slave Island, Firi Rahman documents the fading food traditions of Sri Lanka’s Malay community. Collaborating with the last Malay food vendor family, he records recipes and conversations in Malay, preserving culinary heritage amid urban displacement. Through handwritten notes on old receipts and worn cutting boards, his work captures food as both survival and a marker of loss, where language and memory risk erasure.

OPPORTUNITIES

Call for Recipes: Lesser-known Foods of Sri Lanka

UNDP Sri Lanka's Lesser-known Foods campaign seeks to conserve biodiversity while celebrating the flavours of Sri Lanka's culinary heritage. To submit your recipes, fill this form or learn more at the Lesser-known Foods website.

Deadline: 28th of February.

Fellowship for Young Women Feminists from the Global South

DAWN’s new fellowship programme focuses on The Political Economy of Gender-Based Violence and Conflict, amplifying women’s feminist voices in public discourse.

Learn more here.

Deadline: 1st of March.

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