In conversation: Shana Ellappa on her debut exhibition- The Field as Witness.
- 6 days ago
- 13 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Shana Ellappa is a South African multidisciplinary artist and researcher, born and raised in Johannesburg and currently based in Cape Town. She holds a Master’s degree in Art from Rhodes University, where her research explored how art can function as a counter-archive for marginalised histories, drawing on African feminisms, postcolonial theory, and autoethnography.
Her practice sits at the intersection of visual art, life writing, and memory work, engaging personal and familial narratives to reclaim histories of indentured labour that have often been erased or reduced within official archives. Her latest body of work, The Field as Witness, draws on stories rooted in the sugarcane fields of KwaZulu-Natal, using the recurring figure of the hare as a symbolic, liminal presence to explore themes of displacement, belonging, and intergenerational memory.
Through a visual language shaped by oral storytelling traditions, Ellappa’s work invites viewers into intimate encounters with the past, positioning art as a space for remembrance, reflection, and the gentle reactivation of silenced histories.
Join us as we unpack this work further in conversation.
By Khaya Mnisi
Khaya: I saw your Instagram post where you mentioned that your research asked the question, ‘Who am I?’ I’m curious- how would you answer that today? Who is Shana Ellappa, beyond the work we see?
Shana: Well, I think that’s a really loaded question“Who am I?”and it really depends on the lens you use. If you look at it through an anthropological lens, you might ask why I exist as a woman, as a South African woman. That brings the conversation into identity.
For me, this work led to two key discoveries. One, I was able to locate a physical, geographical place where my lineage began. But beyond that, I realised that the labels we carry (Indian, Coloured, Black, White) are remnants of apartheid. They were imposed on us to make us see difference and to treat us differently.
So I like to shift the question to a phenomenological lens, looking at who I am not through the hats we wear to make the world easier to digest, but through how you experience being yourself, rather than how others categorise you. I define myself by what you cannot see. I define myself by my own holy trinity.
I am a storyteller, and my holy trinity is: beauty of the mind, richness of the soul, and tenderness of the heart.
Beauty of the mind is a lesson my late father taught me, to always remain a student, to stay humble enough to keep learning.
Richness of the soul is everything that excites me, that brings energy and movement to my life: traveling, good food, exploring other cultures, reading, and learning about the world.
Tenderness of the heart is about loving those close to me and moving through the world with kindness, because small acts of tenderness make for a gentler, kinder place.
Khaya: This was your debut exhibition. What did it feel like to see The Field as Witness come together on the wall for the first time?
Shana: This entire experience was actually incredibly exciting for me. I had a strong sense that this body of knowledge, because it all started as research, needed to exist in the physical world. It needed to live and breathe in spaces where people could engage with it. These paintings carry so many stories; they hold narratives, metaphor, and symbolism. The work became conceptually rich because I wanted it to spark conversation, to become a talking piece. For me, that’s when art becomes truly powerful, when we start to employ it as a cultural tool for dialogue, and that’s what made the process so exciting.
Everyone kept asking the usual question, “Are you nervous?” And honestly, I wasn’t. I was genuinely excited to have these conversations with people, to see how the work could open up reflection and discussion or even teach me something new. I was over the moon to see them framed and up, it surpassed any expectations I could have had.
Khaya: When you first began painting, did you already feel drawn to reclaiming silenced histories through visual storytelling, or did that direction reveal itself gradually? Were there other themes you initially felt drawn to?
Shana: For the last eight years, I’ve been studying and researching a central question: how do South African artists reclaim and reimagine their histories and narratives through art? When I completed my master’s, Chapter Two of my thesis focused on South African history, and that chapter alone took me a year and a half to write.
As I dug into history, more and more questions arose. For example, while reading about the Women’s March, the records mention Coloured women, Black women, and White women, but where were Indian women? It became clear that there were layers of stories that were missing, hidden, or told elsewhere. In fact, Indian women were participating in separate marches, fighting for related causes. This was a deeply political moment in the country, and uncovering these stories led me to my own family history. I discovered the indenture numbers of my great-grandparents, the ships they arrived on, and the sugarcane farms where they were employed.
It was then that I realised this knowledge, originally part of a research paper, didn’t belong solely in academia. It needed to exist in the physical world, to live and breathe in spaces where people could engage with it. That’s how this body of work started. These paintings carry stories and narratives, rich with metaphor and symbolism. Conceptually, I wanted the work to become a conversation starter, so I could begin sharing this corner of history. For me, art becomes truly exciting when it functions as a cultural tool for dialogue.
Interestingly, I didn’t start with painting. My first piece was a ceramic pot, titled Nautical Passage. This piece reflects the journey before even arriving at the sugarcane fields, the voyage across the Indian Ocean. While researching for chapter two, I found an old yellow page document in my dad’s school bag, I scanned it and sent it to the documentation centre at UKZN Westville, I found my great-grandparents’ ship lists: their names, ages, indenture numbers, who employed them, and where they came from. This is what this research was all about, I thought. To understand who they were before they arrived as indentured labourers, I had to look at caste. In India, social hierarchy is defined by caste. My great-grandparents were part of the caste whose primary job was woodworkers and ceramicists. They were skilled labourers and artisans, respected for their craft but low in ritual hierarchy.
That’s why I began with the ceramic pot. I wanted to start at the very beginning, before the voyage. I built it using the coil technique, rolling long pieces of clay around the form. The inside lines of the pot evoke topographical contours, like passageways, journeys, and layers of history. I titled it Nautical Passage inspired by Sudesh Mishra’s words: during the voyage, many things were lost (family, caste, religion) but in that loss, they found humanity. People from different castes, religions, and traditions came together on the ship. Survival became about unity: all for one, one for all. The pot embodies that shared journey.
After the pot, I began painting. The voyage had been traced; the next question was, where did they arrive, who employed them, and how did they live? My paintings began to weave together the stories my father shared with me as a child, the histories I uncovered through research, and the lived experiences of my ancestors. The work became a way to bring these layered histories into the present, to make them visible, tangible, and deeply felt.
Khaya: Your work engages deeply with South African Indian histories and memory. As an artist working in that space, were there moments where you had to be especially careful, especially around how things are represented or could be misrepresented?
Shana: I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as being “careful,” but rather, I felt a deep responsibility to tell the story—and to tell it honestly. However I chose to represent it, it was my story to tell. The work is grounded in my experience, my research, and my family’s history, so the guiding principle was always to honour that truth.
Khaya: I noticed the hare appears throughout the exhibition, and it’s such a striking, eye catching figure. How did it come into your work, and what does it allow you to express that a human figure maybe couldn’t, because when I was doing some research into indentured labour, I kept coming across images like sugarcane fields, ships, even weapons, but I didn’t really see those in your paintings. How did you decide what to include and what to leave out visually?
Shana: For me, visually, the question was always: how do I create a body of work that speaks to my research and all the findings I’ve uncovered, but also invites people to ask questions? The point is that when this work lives and breathes in a space, we learn about each other through conversation. Art can become a powerful tool to start those conversations.
When you go into a sugarcane field, you’ll notice many creatures, but three appear most frequently: the snake, the frog, and the hare. The hare, a wild rabbit, has a liminal identity, it never fully settles in one place, never claims a permanent home. And in many ways, indentured labourers and their descendants share that experience. They are constantly negotiating questions like: What is home? Where do I belong?
That constant negotiation is why the hare became such a central figure in my work. It embodies liminality and the ongoing process of finding one’s place. From there, I started thinking about how to represent all of this visually, without literally painting a sugarcane mill or a ship, but still evoking the stories, journeys, and histories that shaped these lives.
Khaya: The colours in your paintings feel really intentional and full of emotion. When you were working, how did you think about colour? Could you maybe walk me through one piece and explain how its palette came together, were the colours symbolic, or more about aesthetics?
Shana: In the collection, there’s a piece titled Beneath the Sun, and the background is this beautiful yellow, the same yellow you see on the jackets in the piece called Lineage. That colour carries a very personal and emotional story for me.
During 2020, my dad brought home two yellow ribbons. We had a large palm-like tree in our back garden in Johannesburg, and he gave my brother and me a ribbon each. He played the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree (Audio)” by Tony Orlando, and part of the lyrics go:
"If I don't see a ribbon 'round the old oak tree I'll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me. If I don't see a yellow ribbon ‘round the old oak tree"
He then invited us to tie the ribbons to the tree and said, “I just want you kids to remember that no matter what happens in the world, you can always come back home.” That moment marked our coming of age, starting university, leaving home, stepping into independence, and it was such a tender, grounding memory.
When my dad passed during COVID in 2021, and we had to sell his home, that yellow ribbon became even more significant. That safe, tangible place of return was gone. My heart felt heavy, and I realized that home isn’t just a place, it’s something we carry within ourselves. Yellow became a symbol of home, belonging, and unconditional love. That’s why you see this colour repeated across my work, it carries memory, comfort, and the sense of home we carry with us.
The other colours in the collection, dusty pinks, greens, and earthy tones, are meant to evoke feeling rather than literal representation. The sugarcane fields are dusty, so instead of painting them literally, I tried to capture the sensation, the atmosphere, the light and texture you experience when you’re there.
For me, colour is both symbolic and emotive. It carries personal memory, cultural meaning, and invites the viewer to feel the work, not just see it.
Khaya: There were two works that really stayed with me, the one titled lineage and The Field Companion. Could you talk me through them a bit? What are they holding, and how do they connect to the larger body of work?
Shana: And then the field companion was actually a painting to show that within this environment, within this history, there was some relationships, there was still connection. There was still humanness that existed even in a…what felt like a very inhumane time, right? And that's just a reminder of that these were people, you know, it was people with souls and hearts. They there was a connection there, there was love there, there was care there, there were families there. And that's what a field companion is about, whether it was a friend, whether it was a romantic partner. And one of my late dad's friends came to the exhibition. And he said, Oh no, this is myfavouriteone. That's you and your dad, you know. And when I created it, I didn't define it by who these people are, but it was interesting to see how people brought their own meaning to it. It can be anyone, you know. It's about how in this world we can't move through in isolation. We as humans, are wired for community. We're wired for connection.
I’m going to start with the painting titled He Wears No Name, and then I’ll talk about Lineage and Field Companion.
He Wears No Name was actually the first painting I did for this collection. It comes from a bedtime story I was told often about my grandfather. He worked in a sugarcane mill and passed away when my dad was only 14. One day, while he was working, he slipped and his leg got caught in the mill’s grinder. It was so powerful that it started pulling him in, and he had to hold himself with everything he had against the drum to stop it from taking his whole body. That’s how he lost both legs.
The painting is called He Wears No Name because even my dad and aunts didn’t know his full name—they only knew him by the initial “C” Ellappa. Later, when I uncovered the ship lists and archival documentation, I learned his name was Chengelroyen. This shows how indentured labour erased identities: people became numbers or initials, not human beings. That story—his struggle, his survival, the humanity behind the statistics—was seared into my imagination as a child, and this painting is my way of holding onto that memory, of giving it a life in the physical world. So, that's what that story is about. It's a remembrance about the living conditions, the working conditions, but it's a direct story that I was told a young as a young girl, about my own grandfather.
Lineage is a painting I love because it speaks to inheritance and connection. Everyone in the painting wears the same jacket, a metaphor for how we all carry each other’s stories within the same lineage. These stories don’t define us entirely, but they are part of who we are. Often, we speak of “carrying history on our backs,” which frames it as a burden. But the ills of the past don’t have to weigh us down; they give context, grounding us in our story while also offering strength. In this piece, we learn to wear our histories with pride. Our stories are meant to be celebrated, honoured, and remembered, not carried heavily. Lineage transforms memory into power, showing that the past shapes us, yes, but it also gives us identity, resilience, and a reason to move forward with pride.
A field companion is about relationships and connection. Even in these histories, in spaces that often felt brutal and inhumane, there were moments of love, care, friendship, and family. This painting is a reminder that these were human beings with hearts and souls, living, laughing, and supporting one another. One of my late dad’s friends came to the exhibition and said, “Oh no, this is my favourite one. That’s you and your dad.” I hadn’t defined the figures, but it was incredible to see how people brought their own experiences and memories into the work. It could be anyone. For me, this piece is a meditation on the fact that we are never truly isolated. We are wired for connection. Community, care, and love are what make us human, and even in the most difficult times, those things persist.
Khaya: I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between consuming art and actually making it. When you were creating this body of work, what was the process like for you emotionally and I guess creatively? Did it feel freeing, challenging, or something else entirely?
Shana: The process is something that had lived in my mind for a long time, more as a feeling than a fully formed idea. I knew what I wanted to express emotionally, but I didn’t yet have a clear visual language for it. Even during my research, I wasn’t thinking, “this is exactly what the work will look like.” That clarity came much later.
I spent a lot of time reading and uncovering archival material. My dad had a collection of old slides, which I had developed, and going through them became an important part of the process. I began asking myself: what does this world actually look and feel like? There was a distinct atmosphere to it, dusty, dry, sometimes green, and I was trying to understand and translate that feeling.
It was a process of uncovering, not necessarily challenging, but deeply exciting and powerful. It took me a long time to arrive at the subject matter, because I was searching for what felt right rather than what was “correct.” And then, eventually, I arrived at the hare.
And when I arrived at the hare. It became very freeing. It became very easy to do, you know, suddenly I was like, “Yes, I can tell this story”. My possibilities became kind of endless there, you know. So it was an uncovering process. And in that uncovering, there was a reclaiming, and then a creating, which was very powerful.
Khaya: And finally, what do you hope someone carries with them after experiencing The Field as Witness?
Shana: What I hope someone carries with them after experiencing this work is curiosity, and through that curiosity, the power that comes from knowing yourself. Not just curiosity about the paintings, but curiosity about your own story. When you explore your own history, your own experiences, you give yourself power, you uncover the layers that make your life rich and meaningful. We all have stories that need to be told, and in knowing and owning them, we find strength, identity, and resilience. That is what I hope people carry with them: the courage to discover themselves and the knowledge that understanding your story gives you power.
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