E15 - Imaad Majeed, “Questions of Jailani”

Imaad Majeed (Sri Lanka)
“Questions of Jailani” (2025)

"Questions of Jailani" is a sound-based artwork that explores the contested sacred site of Dafther Jailani in Kuragala, Sri Lanka– a place where overlapping mythologies, militarized nationalism, and religious orthodoxy converge to distort plural histories. Once an overflowing Sufi shrine, Jailani has become a battleground of authenticity– Sinhala Buddhist nationalists seek to reframe it as a prehistoric archaeological site devoid of Muslim presence, while orthodox Sunni factions reject its mystical practices as idolatry. In this struggle over origins, shared memory is dismantled to make way for singular, purified narratives.

This work constructed from field recordings gathered in collaboration with artist Abdul Halik Azeez, listens closely to the space. A military personnel sweeps the grounds while Buddhist chants echo faintly. We hear the sounds of nature as the invocation “ameen” is stretched into a spectral resonance, unsettling the boundary between human and non-human utterance. 

Inspired by a caretaker’s account of encounters with the jinn of nearby Jinni Malai, who claimed the politics of our realms are interconnected, the work considers listening as a method of resistance and speculation. In an attempt to hear the more-than-human realm and the unresolved memory it holds, it asks: what is the sound of Sinhala Buddhist colonization? What survives in the silence now that the fakhirs no longer dwell there? Questions of Jailani is not a restoration of lost sound, but an invitation to attune to what remains: echoes, hauntings, and entanglements across time, faith, and species. 

Imaad Majeed
is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. They are Director and Curator of the trilingual performance platform “KACHA KACHA”. They are one part of the artist collective “The Packet” and VJ/DJ of “Packet Radio” (SUPR FM). They are Project Coordinator and Co-Curator of Thattu Pattu, a platform for music from the fringes of Sri Lanka. Their poetry has been published in “Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English poetry from Sri Lanka and its diasporas”, “CITY: A Journal of South Asian Literature”, as well as the local small-press chapbooks “Lime Plain Tea” and “Annasi & Kadalagotu”. Their artwork, in various mediums, has been featured at Tamil Studies Symposium, Queer Tamil Collective, Colomboscope, Chobi Mela, Queer Arts Festival, Serendipity Arts Festival, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka, BuchBasel, and Spielart Theatre Festival, among others. They are presently working on “KANNOORU”, exploring Sri Lankan Sufi/Muslim identity, community, memory, erasure, ancestry and mysticism through sample-based music.