Ushara Dilrukshan

Ushara is a sonic performance artist and soprano working across expanded opera, composition, pipe organ and experimental theatre. 
She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art.

Work
  1. Triangle reshapes the O of my mouth (c. Anousha Payne)
  2. The Unattended Organ
  3. First Breath (V&A East)
  4. I am back from where I came
  5. Resonant Bodies
  6. 100 Instruction Scores to Overcome Trauma
  7. After Hunger
  8. Landscape Silence Night
  9. Guila Tofana
  10. Veilwork
  11. Weather Reports, Colomboscope
  12. Between walls and voices
  13. Celestial Conversations
  14. Sonic Relics
  15. To the shore
  16. Trembling Nearness
  17. Feedback for Three Amps and Vox
  18. Pooja
  19. Heavy is the head
  20. She’s what I smeared on the world
  21. The Light the Day Gave
  22. Even God Can’t Save You Now
  23. Empty Pipes
  24. Extensions
  25. Come Inside
  26. Fishermans Hymn
  27. Summer Solstice Drone
  28. Limbo
  29. As of Right Now
  30. Exhumation
  31. To Dunhinda Falls
  32. Mege Gerada

Curation
  1. Moments No1
  2. Yliaster
  3. Exhume

 Bandcamp
Sound Designs

Artist Statement
Instagram
The Unattended Organ

Project in progress
2024- Current 

This ongoing project explores the remaining church pipe organs in Sri Lanka as living sonic bodies rather than historical artefacts. It is guided by a manifesto for ethical decolonial field recording, developed through conversations with artist-researchers and composers such as Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, shaping a careful and critically informed approach to historically embedded sound.

Alongside research, the approach is informed by my ongoing practical work as an organ tuner in England, grounding the listening process in the physical mechanics of wind, pressure, and maintenance, and shaping a sensitivity to how instruments age, fail, and continue to speak. Through deep listening and field recording, I engage the organs in their present, fragile condition — treating leaks, detuning, and accidental drones as compositional material.

Early research was supported by Sound and Music’s Funded in Motion Composer micro-grant, enabling initial fieldwork and recording development. The project continues to expand into composition, performance, and methodology for working with historically embedded sound.

Regular archive listening and cataloguing sessions are occuring at Brompton Cemetery Chapel. The next session will be held on April 29th.

The project will continue to develop during a residency at the EMS.