A softer limestone is the second work in a series that centres on Ram Setu, or Adam’s Bridge, a limestone shoal crossing the Palk Strait between Sri Lanka and India. Ram Setu is a unique geological feature and a site of foundational significance to these nations' different religious groups.
"In A softer limestone the camera meditates over the striated formations of limestone scarps and cliffs around nearby Maungati and Kakahu. Lekamge narrates a number of different stories: the cosmic battle between a cyclone and a temple; her great aunt’s regular travels between India and Sri Lanka over Ram Setu on the Boat Mail Express (formerly the Indo-Ceylon Express); and opposing plans for the development and conservation of the Palk Strait, and the ecological and political futures at stake there. These events parallel environmental changes within Timaru’s landscape: the draining of wetlands to form pasture; the imposition of a coastal breakwater to encourage maritime trade; and the significant loss of mahinga kai which these changes have caused over the last two and a half centuries. This film entwines remote pasts, mythologies and notions of deep time within the present landscape. In Lekamge’s videos, narrative cycles and recurring geological events, reflected in South Canterbury’s metamorphic terrain, become a means of excavating displacement and diasporic longing."
— Amy Weng, 2023.
