Published on 17 September, 2026
Pavithran's “In-between Presence and Absence” project confronts a question that sits at the intersection of architecture, memory, and power: when regional cinema is weaponised as propaganda and war erases the monuments that hold a community's history, how does a people reclaim the stories that shaped them? The answer, he found, lay in the rubble itself — where communities whose memorials and cemeteries had been destroyed built mounds from the wreckage, creating new structures that paid homage to storytelling in an era of censorship, and proving that collective memory cannot be demolished as easily as the buildings that once carried it.
The award was presented on stage by Mr. Wee, Group CEO of NIPSEA Group.
