Sri Lankan - SOAS University of London

Sri Lankan
Contemporary Art
Serendipity Revealed
C o n t e m p o r a r y S r i La n ka n A r t
Cura ted by Annoushka Hemp el
9 t h O c tobe r - 20 t h De c e m be r 20 14
B R U N E I G A L L E R Y, L O N D O N
Foreword
Curators’ Note
SriLankan Airlines, as the national carrier of Sri Lanka, is immensely pleased to support the budding
Sri Lankan artists whose selected works of art are
featured in the much anticipated exhibition, “Serendipity Revealed.”, unveiled at the Brunei Gallery,
London.
SERENDIPITY REVEALED:
A POST WAR PERSPECTIVE
“Serendipity Revealed” presents an assortment of
Sri Lankan contemporary art, displayed in various
mediums such as sculpture, installation, video, painting and photography. Even though traditional Sri
Lankan art has evoked much interest globally, the
world is yet to explore our contemporary art that
emerged during and following the years of conflict;
that is thematically and contextually diverse. As
much as art reveals the hidden sides of a culture,
it inspires the viewer and the art enthusiast to explore more into a country’s hidden artistic traits.
Hence, the viewers, apart from the knowledge of
the existence of such art, will know the existence
of such a country; the very land where the inspiration for such art originated from. As the national
carrier we have been extending our patronage to
the local talent showcased through such platforms,
which in return inspires the viewers to explore its
country of origin.
I consider it a pleasure to be part of this exhibition,
organized by Colombo Art Biennale in collaboration
with Hempel Galleries, who have been working tirelessly to support and promote budding local artists
and I would like to wish them all the success and
strength to continue such endeavours.
I also would like to wish these artists all the very
best and I hope that this may serve a crucial milestone in their careers.
On behalf of all Sri Lankans, I would like to invite
you to enjoy and appreciate this carefully selected
collection of Sri Lankan art and I hope you travel to
the island that is symbolized, reflected and illustrated in what you view today, in the near future.
Mr. Kapila Chandrasena
Chief Executive Officer
SriLankan Airlines
When looking at the contemporary art of a
country like Sri Lanka, it is impossible to do so
without engaging with the island’s recent history. Sri Lanka has seen historical events that
have marked the country, its people and its
artists. When observing the art, the viewer is
presented with a narrative that not only takes
a macrocosmic view telling the stories of a
country and its people, but also focuses on the
micro-cosmic levels of individuals and their personal experiences.
Serendipity Revealed presents the works of
fourteen carefully selected artists, to unveil
some of the multitude of stories the country
and its people have witnessed.
It is therefore not surprising that Memories feature significantly as a theme in many of the artists’ works, particularly those stemming from
the 90’s trend.
This is evident from the works of Pushpakumara - filled with the motif of barbed wire, an incessant memory of a boy growing up surrounded this familiar material - to Bandu Manamperi’s
works speaking of how memories of events
live within our being and shape and form us
as a ‘people’ and a ‘nation’. His Iron Man works
speak of attempts to remove the creases left
behind by memories.
In Kingsley Gunatillake’s unreadable books, we
learn of censorship and the idea of ‘re-writing
history’ - the presence of physical bullets still
dominating stories to be known. The works of
Pala Pothupitiye speak of the individual’s position in society, the Sri Lankan caste system,
the effects this has on the individual and in turn
the effects it has had on the country and a
nation as a whole. In his map works, we see
how a land is literally reshaped and formed by
status, religion and the effects of colonialism
and nationalism. Pradeep Thalawatte attempts
to recount his experience of removing himself
Annoushka Hempel
from the comfort of his home - the dominant
Sinhalese South - and placing himself in the Tamil
town of Jaffna in the North, a territory filled with
memories of conflict and violence and now experiencing a transient and unknown future. Anoli
Perera takes on the role of the female - tradition
and traditional values in relation to gender, colonialist remains and memory keeping. The expanse of her memory stretching defines her need to
recall in her work, the period of colonial Sri Lanka (Ceylon) of which her parents were a part.
These narratives evolve with a younger generation of artists who speak less of the political civil
conflict and war, and more of the socio-political
conflicts and tensions driven by traditional values. These artists - mostly in their 30’s - have
not been exposed first hand to the violence of
the conflicts.
The works of Danushka Marasinghe speak of
the fragility of a new ‘peaceful’ time, the lingering fear of the recent past, the looming eyes
that keep watch over this new and unfamiliar
uncertainty of a serene and prosperous future.
He asks whether it is possible to erase history,
as it always leaves marks. Janananda Laksiri’s
works are a powerful representation of life’s
challenges, the urban jungle of life. Buddhist and
Hindu images, as well as bats and crows representing bureaucratic and political scavengers,
fill the canvas. His works, highly charged with
energy and emotions, take the viewer beyond
personal despair to focus on the broader issues of society. Vimukthi Jayasundera, an artist
who uses film as his medium, takes a contemporary view of social traditional practices. His
work plunges the viewer into a visual feast that
erases the borders between fiction and documentary to deliver an experience of a culture
directly to the senses.
‘Serendipity Revealed’ attempts to further unravel stories through the visual narratives of the
diaspora and views from another world.
Mahen Perera’s objects - sometimes reminiscent of cabinet curios left behind from the colonial era - but also evocative of rubble either
left behind by the war or newly created for development. His time spent away in Singapore
have impacted on his sensitivities to the beauty
of ‘his’ country in all its rawness
Reginald Aloysius’ experiences – being of Sri
Lankan Tamil descent from Jaffna but having
lived in the UK all his life - have led him to investigate cultural change and diaspora through the
exploration of the iconography of Sri Lankan
and Southern Indian temples, thereby investigating the social agency inherent in any cultural
choice. Nina Mangalanayagam, also of Sri Lankan Tamil descent and from Sweden but living
in London, takes a personal direction, using her
own experiences and family background to
explore the fluidity and unfixed nature of identities, the interplay of influence among identity,
family, society, and environments. In doing so,
she exposes the complications of differences
between people, shaped by the immediate
environment as well as past experience and
history. Similarly, Liz Fernando, of Singhalese
descent, but having grown up in Europe, delves
into the role of photography in South Asia and
highlights the different meanings that photography, identity, history and the notion of memory
occupy within non-western cultures. She looks
at identity, heritage and the differences in perceptions towards cultural and social doctrines
and dogmas.
Finally, further unfolding and revealing the stories of a country, would not be complete without the view and perspective of the visitor.
Cora de Lang, a travelling artist, spent six years working in Sri Lanka. Her work spins tales, combining her views and observations as
a nomadic traveller, moving from one culture
to another. Her airline flight bags, beautifully
‘decorated’, subconsciously and perhaps inadvertently mark the stories of mothers, fathers,
sons and daughters, leaving their families to
work and live in the Middle East to send money
home in the hope of facilitating a better life for
their families.
In unfolding and exposing some of the myriad
of experiences and stories, Serendipity Revealed
attempts to give a glimpse into the depth of a
fascinating country that has witnessed immense change.
By Annoushka Hempel
Artists
Reginald Aloysius
Liz Fernando
Kingsley Gunatillake
Vimukthi Jayasundera
Janananda Laksiri
Cora de Lang
Bandu Manamperi
Nina Mangalanayagam
Dhanushka Marasinghe
Anoli Perera
Mahen Perera
Pala Pothupitiye
Koralegedara Pushpakumara
Pradeep Thalawatta
Reginald Aloysius
Reginald S. Aloysius is a British-born artist of Sri Lankan Tamil descent whose background has informed
his work exploring themes of globalisation, emigration, and the destruction of tradition through development and modernisation. Through exploration of
the iconography of Sri Lankan and Southern Indian
temples, Aloysius investigates the social agency inherent in any cultural choice.
Aloysius graduated from The Ruskin School, Oxford
before completing a Masters at Kingston University
on a research-based drawing programme. Following
a successful first solo show at Master Piper in 2010,
Aloysius was short listed for the Jerwood Drawing
Prize 2011, the Discerning Eye Exhibition 2011 and
more recently, was included in the London Art Fair
2012, the National Art Competition 2012, Zeitgeist Art
Projects Open 2012 Breeze Block Gallery, Oregon,
USA, and was a joint award winner at the One Church
Street Gallery Drawing Open 2012; he participated in
the Colombo Art Biennale 2014. Aloysius has also
been short listed for the inaugural Derwent Drawing
Prize, to be exhibited this September.
“Detailed drawings of Indian Hindu temples coupled
with a delicate use of paint create an alluring relationship between drawing and painting”.
The Hindu temples in the work are examples of Dravidian architecture looming out from the undergrowth,
(drawing parallels with early colonial photographers
in Asia, eg; Linneus Tripe, Henri Mouhet or Samuel
Byrne) but they are not ‘ruins’; they are still active
places of worship.
If these works are structured according to tradition,
then modernity enters through vector-like routes.
Over the top of the images, I have inscribed - etched
into the surface of the wooden support - a series of
precise lines. These lines are, in fact, based on airline
flight paths. They are mapped on to the works and, in
the process radically scar them - an act that cannot
be undone - using a scalpel, before finally painting
into the grooves using Humbrol paint, thus melding
together two quite different iconographic registers.
Commercial flight paths are, of course, also migratory routes. The ‘paintings’ are maps that pick out
the routes of contemporary Tamil culture. Originally
maps were intuitive and symbolic rather than cartographic: they were drawings that expressed an idea
of place rather than a definition of space. There is a
conceptual continuity in the work between the idea
of drawing and the concept of making one’s mark, of
recording and inscribing one’s subjectivity. They may
also be seen as lines that threaten to turn the surety
of national identity into the shifting, nomadic identity
of transnational cultures.
Drawing relates to other processes of cultural mark
making, including the introduction of an international style of modern architecture that inscribes itself
on age-old landscapes and cultures. I reference such
structures in the paintings through a series of thin
lines that suggest a tension between the old and
the new, between the architecture of ancient temples and modern skyscrapers, offices and apartments.
These vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines (scaffolding of new buildings) have the quality of an invasion.” R.S. Aloysius
Born 1970
‚TRANSIT‘, Graphite drawing, etched lines, enamel and oil paint,
gold leaf, varnish on primed MDF, 2014
Liz Fernando
Award-winning fine artist and photographer, Fernando
is a graduate from the LCC BA photography programme at the University of Arts, London.
Fernando, who is of of Sri Lankan descent, was born,
raised and educated entirely in Europe. Her research
delves into the role of photography in South Asia and
the resulting work highlights the different meanings
each of photography, identity, history and the notion
of memory, occupy within non-western cultures.
Fernando’s work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern and her highly acclaimed work ‘Trincomalee - My
father’s stories and the lost photographs’ has recently
been acquired for the permanent private collection of
the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C.
Liz lives and works in London, Hanover and Colombo.
Khrisnikaa: London, 2011:
This work explores the framework of a woman’s
traditional identity - her freedoms, her constrictions
and the story behind a girl of South Asian origin living
within the melting pot of Europe. In a contemporary
social environment, the notion of identity is almost
impossible to define. Yet the question remains whether we ever had the ability to establish identity by
creating a multi-ethnic compendium of stereotypes,
as opposed to a perpetual search left to the imagination.
Trincomalee: self-published artist book, London, 2012:
“This is a work about a journey - a journey to a
place where the objective of a photograph ponders
an evolving interplay between its fragile and fugitive
existence.
Trincomalee in Sri Lanka became synonymous with
the war-ravaged northern region. In contrast, my
father’s stories are not nostalgic ruminations on its
political history but naïve and beautiful little conversational episodes between a Tamil girl and a Sinhalese
boy, describing a childhood lived in innocence free
from existing social restrictions. It is a visual journey
to a forgotten past preserved in my mind’s eye only
through precious oral histories relayed by my father.
Though they are at times ambiguous and ungraspable
I have tried to formulate them into touchable and palpable pictorial narratives. The text oscillates between
the present and the past, dealing with memories that
linger and continue to haunt.
The Imprint of Lovers: Colombo, 2014:
When lovers leave, nothing but light is left behind.
Yearning bodies unfold between these naked walls,
drowning the space with memories and filling the air
with a breathless touch of intimacy. And yet, even
their absence is so powerful that their presence remains within me. The Imprint of Lovers is a personal
reflection on the perception of sexuality in a South Asian context. This piece of work looks into the
understanding of intimate emotions of young lovers,
who are often faced with no choice but to meet in an
extremely impersonal space, specifically a budget hotel room that can be rented by the hour. The thought
is not unheard of, and lovers are well aware of it as
they risk even the possibility of arbitrary police raids.
Intimacy is not intimate unless the setting has been
made to be so, and the concept, when explored in a
contemporary yet conservative South Asian environment, tells the story of an unbearable dramatic and
melancholic catharsis that culminates in my destructive longing to have a presence.
Born 1982
Khrisnikaa, 2014
Kingsley Gunatilleke
Kingsley is a painter, installation artist and book artist
who received his BFA in Fine Art at the University
of Colombo and Diploma in Environmental Education
from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow 1994. He
is currently a visiting Lecturer in Visual Art at the Faculty of Visual Arts of the University of Visual and
Performing Arts in Colombo.
Kingsley has had several solo exhibitions in Sri Lanka,
the UK, the Philippines, Ireland, Glasgow and India. He
has also participated in many group exhibitions and
international artist camps both in Sri Lanka and abroad, most recently in France, London, Lincoln (UK),
Asia House London, Sojo Galley Japan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and in Korea.
Kingsley is recognised as a senior artist within the
contemporary Sri Lankan art scene that spearheaded
the 90’s trend. The recipient of a number of national
awards and international awards in Czechoslovakia
and Japan, Gunatillake‘s paintings, sculptures and Installations can be found in several private collections
including the President’s Collection of Contemporary
Art.
“We, who failed to understand the harmful effects of
ethnic discrimination in the 1915 Muslim conflict or the
1956 Tamil conflict have suffered a 30 year civil war
which sprang up in 1983 with Black July. The wounds
and scars caused by the brutality and violence of that
war are still visible and hurt. There are no live bullets
now. However, the scars of where the live bullets
once were still remain. Do read the irreversible lunacy
of ethnic conflict on spent cartridges as well as in
weapon marks buried inside this book.”
Kingsley lives and works from his Studio in Kandy,
Sri Lanka.
Born 1951
‚Book art”
“Unfortunately you cannot have the pleasure of reading these books and turning their pagers, but you
will be able to read them through the materials I use.
Sometimes you will be able to read deeper into the
concept of these books, and sometimes you will
be taken further away from them, awakening various
symbolic, contextual and inter-contextual meanings.”
‘Bullet Books’ are like cartridges where ammunition is
kept. Instead of letters, words and ideas that can be
read, they have rather become an arsenal containing
empty ammunition that had been used at war or for
killing. Communication through words in these books
has been burnt by incandescent bullets that reflect
rage of violence.
Bulletbook 1, 2014
Vimukthi Jayasundara
Vimukthi Jayasundara is an award-winning young
Sri Lankan director known for his surreal films that
erase the borders between fiction and documentary, between cinema and visual art. After finishing his
documentary ‘The Land of Silence’ (2002) about the
victims of civil war, he made his directorial debut with
‘The Forsaken Land’ (2005), which won the Camera
d’Or for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival.
Jayasundara followed this with ‘Between Two Worlds’
(2009), which competed at the Venice Film Festival,
and has been shown at over 100 festivals internationally. His third feature ‘Mushrooms’ (2011) was selected for Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. In 2012 he
was invited to be one of three international directors
to produce a film for the Jeonju Digital Project 2012,
for which he made ‘Light in Yellow Breathing Space’,
which was selected for the Locarno Film Festival.
Born 1982
The Forsaken Land, 2005
Neither war nor peace, just the wind blowing
God is absent, but still the sun rises
Over a lonely home between two trees in a forsaken land
A hand emerges from the water, begging for help
A legendary woman searches for love
A soldier kills a stranger, and is burdened by guilt
Between Two Worlds, 2009
The young man has fallen from the sky, the lines of
communication are burned, to flee the city and its
tumult, get back to nature, enter into another story,
of the legend of the prince, in the hope of a love,
to hide in the hollow of the tree, nothing magical is
improbable, what happened yesterday may happen
again tomorrow.
‘Light in Yellow Breathing Space’
Janananda Laksiri
Laksiri, who stems from a fine arts and design education, has been driven to explore the world of electronics, IT and 2D/3D graphic software. The result
reveals powerful digital art and striking multimedia
installations.
His ‘Screaming Elergy’ works (2012) portray urbanscapes crowed by power poles and wires criss-crossing along the line of view, across which man swings
through the precarious and treacherous events that
life delivers. Man also treads carefully along the rightrope of life, through the challenges and chaos of
the urban jungle. He is dwarfed by daunting symbolic
creatures such as bats and crows and representations of religious symbols that dominate, manipulate
and control man’s free identity.
His ‘Mirror Images’ work, created for the 2012 Colombo Art Biennale, an installation of a charred power
pole with a flickering streetlamp surrounded by tall
mirrors parallel to each other, successfully brings the
viewer into a direct experience of the how man is
ignorantly asleep to his slavery to life. The mirrors
serve to remind one not only of our presence but
also our participation
Laksiri’s works are superbly executed and highly
charged with energy and emotions that take the viewer beyond personal despair to focus on the broader issues of society. His works unashamedly force
the question of ‘Who do we need to become to
survive?’
Born 1979
Combustion, 2014
Photo by: Menika van der Poorten
Cora de Lang
‘Lady Bags’
Cora has been part of the art scene in India, Mexico,
Nigeria/West Africa and Sri Lanka. Whatever art of hers
relates to these „chapters“ of her life is and will remain
art from that place.
“When I spoke initially of resistance, of carnival as a
means of opposition, I meant the temporary revolt
of suppressed against suppresser representatives - I
showed that this is not happening with the sword but
with the mask, with the weapon of humour, of love
for life with a Bacchanalian feature. Within the carnival
culture this opposition remains suspended. Such ideas
I find expressed in a pronounced way in the “Lady
Bags” which I saw in Sri Lanka. When I now see these
lady bags in front of me, I find them fabulous as I can
recognize the humour, appreciate them in their sensitive artistic understanding.”
Matthias Mühling
Richard Lang, 2014, former Colombo Goethe Institut
Director
De Lang may be viewed as a modern transnational
artist with a strong leaning towards magic realism, mysticism and eclecticism. A unique blending of reality and
fantasy is achieved through her use of intense, vivid
colours and archetypal images and symbols, woven
into intricate, surreal patterns that are as captivating
and energising as ritual music or dance.
The media used in de Lang’s works include permanent
ink, acrylic, polymer, digital collages and mixed media,
while the surfaces range from canvas to paper bags
and boxes. The exhibits may be broadly grouped into
the ritual art series, the flight bag series, the lady’s bag
series, the paper bag series, and the pop art series
The spatial template for her paintings comprises several regions, including South America, Africa, the Indian
sub-continent, and Europe. Her work is multi-cultural
and multi-religious, for it contains elements of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and animism. Anoli Perera writes, “De Lang’s personal history is inextricably bound
up with her work: growing up in the background of a
political dictatorship and amidst Beatle mania, electric
guitars and imagining of a world without boundaries,
the woman from Argentina who has nurtured roots in
Germany, a frequent flyer within and between continents, living with a notion of impermanence in other
people’s countries and cultures. This is the reality of de
Lang’s life; this is the topography of her work. All these
factual markers let us process our perceptions of de
Lang’s work, allowing us to read them within a broad
canvas. They also make her intensely cosmopolitan in
her approach to life and art.”
Her work embraces mysticism, modernism and pop
art, and her passion for surreal imagery is both fierce
and compelling. Her style is unconventional, and the
viewer is likely to find her work extremely interesting, if
not intensely appealing, as well as intellectually stimulating, given the deeply symbolic, ritualistic and iconic
aspects of her work.
Senaka Abeyratne
‘Envelopes’
‘Flight bags’
If you have been a passenger on any flight you may
have found these in front of you along with the inflight magazine. Uniform and unattractive, they are to
be used in emergency, just in case. Whilst quite rare
nowadays, the bags are still there and often their only
adornment is the name of the airline. „I spent many
years looking at “neglected” items of our every day
life, pulling them out of their corners, re-arranging them
into an art environment and projecting them into new
art spaces, contextualizing the created art installation. Somehow I feel that these bags belong to the
passengers; even more, that the bags may stand for
each of the passengers and his or her very personal
disposition on that particular flight. As there is a huge
variety of people on each flight, I felt myself called
upon to individualize each of the bags to suggest the
uniqueness of the passenger it was meant for. You
may find the joyous adventures of expectant tourists,
the anxious student on his first flight to a foreign university. You may find the labourer on his way to a Gulf
state, the businessman carrying an important decision
with him, the artist on his way, or the boxer already
envisaging his defeat. Each bag intends to suggest the
individual behind the traveller. Out of the uniformity of
bags - neglected and unused - I‘ve tried to suggest the
multiplicity of human conditions.“
It was while de Lang was living in Nigeria (1995-1999)
that she started to collect envelopes containing important messages for her, which in turn inspired her to
adorn these keepers of memories.
“I was conscious of their presence and the long journeys they had undertaken, of the many hands that
touched them.”
Cora learnt from her mother, who came from Guatemala, that, as Mayan culture also suggests, people
pass on energy to objects when they touch them. “I
was aware of this when I interacted with my envelopes, looking for the hidden energy, deciphering and
recreating narratives of these travelling objects. Some
people I know would even be able to ‘read’ stories
out of them, could catch the footprints on these envelopes, simply by touching them. What is certain is
that these envelopes are no longer simple envelopes
carrying a message, but have become permeated with
stories of which I was always a part “.
Once again, Cora presents objects that in their pristine
appearance are well known to the viewer, but when
changed, altered and re-arranged in an artistic process,
create an astonishing new, artistically impressive display of aesthetic invitations in the eyes of the beholders.
Cora lives and works in Munich
Circus, Flight bag, 2011
Bandu Manamperi
Bandu Manamperi holds a BFA in Sculpture and is a
core member of Colombo’s Theertha Artists’ Collective. Being one of the initiators of performance art in Sri
Lanka, Bandu remains one of the leading performance
artists active at present. He creates highly personal art
experiences based on the transformation of his own
body. However he does not limit himself to any one
genre; his art practice also encompasses sculpture,
drawing, painting, and installation art. He lectures and
consults widely on a range of topics including contemporary art, performance, museology, and local
craft traditions.
Bandu has been a leading figure in several social art
projects carried out under the aegis of Theertha, including “Let’s Take a Walk” and “Ape Gama.”
The works of Bandu bring together notions of memory, and demonstrate how the effects of external
events and doctrines are absorbed into the individual’s
being through the body to create memories that become inscribed within us.
‘Iron Man’ 2014
Created for the Colombo Art Biennale 2014, Bandu’s
performance-based video and photographic stills,
show him undressing and then ironing his clothes.
These works represent the acts of removing oneself
from the past and erasing memories. Ironing out the
‘creases’ implies the creation of a new history and a
sanitised identity.
“Iron Man” is a series of works that began with performances at the Colombo Art Biennale in 2014 - removing his own clothes, ironing them in public and putting
them back on was an absurd act. He then performed
this at the Dhaka Art Summit and in Jaffna, in Northern
Sri Lanka.
In his ‘Iron Man’ photo performances Bandu Manamperi
is ironing his own shirt outdoors, in public spaces. Performing a normal, private, indoor, day-to-day activity
in completely unexpected places, is perplexing. Why?
Why is he doing this abnormal act? What is he trying
to say?
Bandu’s locations of choice in these photo performance works are in front of historical colonial buildings
as well as contemporary buildings and constructions.
The relationship between the past and present, colonial and contemporary, old and new, makes a statement
that there is no great difference between the exertion
of power in the colonial era of the country and after
independence, indicating a prevailing sense of totalita-
rianism. It also shows an attraction to the superficial,
nostalgic beauty of the past and the prosperity-pretending neat and orderly beauty of the present.
The contemporary moment in the Sri Lankan sociopolitical atmosphere is a vital factor. After the end of
the 30-year war post war, Sri Lanka is in an astonishing
phase of (so- called) development work. Very large
scale island wide road development work and construction projects beautify the country, and for the
eyes of the mad it has made Sri Lanka ‘The Wonder of
Asia’. Bandu’s abnormal action of ironing, removing the
crumple marks and creases, is a symbolic representation of this sort of abnormal neatness, order and beauty in society which conceal massive social problems
that lie beneath. Extreme nationalism and extreme
religious-nationalism are the root of these issues.
Bandu ‘takes his body’ and performs in these very
sensitive locations. A slight mishap could lead to a detention. This risk-taking body and action is seen closeup in his ‘Iron Man’ video performance.
Lalith Manage, Sept 2014
Bandu currently lives and works in Bandaragama.
Born 1972
Iron Man - In Front of Town Hall, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2014
Untitled (from the series The folds of the fabric fall differently each time), 2008
Nina Mangalanayagam
Nina Mangalanayagam, of Sri Lankan Tamil descent,
is a Swedish artist based in London. She uses her
personal experience and family background to explore the fluidity and unfixed nature of identities, the
interplay of influence in identity, family, society, and
environments. Through her practice she explores the
experience of being “in-between” cultures and how
she is perceived because of her mixed background.
Nina has a Masters in Photography from the Royal
College of Art and is currently doing a PhD by practice
at the University of Westminster. She recently completed a video commission for Radar, Loughborough
University, as part of their Home/Land series, which
was exhibited in Cape Town in July 2013. Other recent exhibitions include Entanglement at Rivington
Place, International Departure - Gate 10 at Fondazione Fotografia and Surfacing at European Commisson House. She received the Jerwood Photography
Award and the Photoworks Graduate Award in 2005
and was short-listed for ArtsAdmin’s Decibel Visual
Artist Award in 2006.
“In my practice I expose the complications of difference between people, shaped by the immediate
environment as well as past experience and history.
Using the relationship I have to my own relatives and
immediate family, I analyse how adaptation, gesture
and belonging impact on our identity. Through stills,
moving images and text I highlight difficulties in identities when our idea of ourselves does not correspond to our environment or family or to the image
others have of us - and the impact this has on wider
societal structures.
Movements and gestures help us to connect and
communicate with people around us, but the same
gestures also divide people. Our movements often
become the inexplicable difference between people
from different worlds, whether of nationality or class.
Our body language can act as a barrier between
people and create misunderstandings and hostilities.
In “The folds of the fabric fall differently” each time I
have concentrated on the gaps between people in
my own family. I am half-Tamil and half-Danish but
grew up in Sweden. I had hardly any contact with
my Tamil relatives as a child because of the large
physical and cultural distance between us. Originally
from Sri-Lanka, my father’s family has ended up in
very different places in the world, living very different
lives. I am interested in how the physical gap has
created mental boundaries between us. Our different
experiences and situations in life have impacted on
our sense of self. This has influenced our identity in
relationship to each other, complicating relationships
within the family. In this body of work I am analysing
my own place within this family structure and where
the difficulties arise. I am an outsider and an insider at
the same time of the situations that I am photographing, being a part of something but yet simultaneously trying to make sense of my place within it.”
Nina Mangalanayagam
Born 1980
Danushka Marasinghe
Danushka trained at the University of Visual and
Performing Arts in Colombo and at the Digital Film
Academy of the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, where he developed his skills in and love of animation,
as well as other film techniques. This resulted in the
creation of his first short film,‘R.I.P.’ His work was also
influenced by participation in the ‘Art Needs Space’
project, a one year partnership programme between
the Colombo Goethe-Institut and the Colombo Art
Biennale, in which 25 artists were selected to take
part in a collaborative public art venture.
Danushka is a member of CoCA (Collective of Contemporary Artists) which evolved from the ‘Art Needs
Space’ project. His work was shown at the first ‘CoCA’
exhibition at the Colombo Goethe-Institut, and at the
‘CoCA’ CAB Around Town fringe exhibition for the
2012 Colombo Biennale, where he exhibited ‘Eyes’.
This led to a solo exhibition at Theertha Red Dot
Gallery in 2012, and to participation in the 2013 exhibition ‘War and Peace: Visual Narratives from Contemporary Sri Lanka’. In 2014 Danushka was selected as
an individual artist for the Colombo Art Biennale for
his striking ‘Conceal of Marks’ video installation.
Danushka’s interests lie particularly in the expressive
power of the audio-visual medium to explore sociopolitical issues such as violence, racism, bigotry and
environmentalism, and how privacy (and the lack of
it) has become one of the defining issues of modern
society.
‚Eyes‘ 2012: Video Installation
“Undergarments are something we use to cover up
private parts of the body. Our privacy is terribly invaded, making us very vulnerable. After the end of the
war in Sri Lanka, there was an increased eye on citizens. CCTV cameras, data gathering systems, military
personnel intermingling with society are some means
of gathering personal data. This has been especially
true for minorities and people with opposing views
to the prevailing system.
If there is peace, and the war is over, then what are
those ‘eyes’ looking at? Why are they looking? The
issues and problems have evolved, not been solved.
I feel very uncomfortable as if those ‘eyes’ are on
and in my body.”
‘Conceal of Marks’ 2014:
This video explores how the attempt to erase history
are never simple, but always leave their own marks,
bearing witness both to the act of erasure itself and
to the agent of erasure. When a war is over, it is
never over.
Danushka lives and works in Colombo.
Born 1985
Conceal of Marks, 2014
Dinner Table, 2013
Anoli Perera
Anoli’s work consists of installations, paintings, sculpture, video and more recently, photo-performances.
Hailed as the pioneering contemporary woman artist in
Sri Lanka, she ushered in art informed by feminism and
craft art practices. Her work engages critically with themes ranging from women’s issues, history and myth to
identity, colonialism and post colonial anxieties.
Anoli’s work incorporates the concept of ‘bricolage’,
in which fragments from different written texts, images,
raw materials, objects and painted surfaces are juxtaposed to give a textured surface. She was formally
trained as a stone carver and is also captivated by the
processes of needle work; as a result, her art-making
tends to incorporate stitching and a predominant use
of fabric as raw material for her sculptures and installations.
“My subject matter always comes out of various situations and experiences in the social contexts I live in.
Therefore my work reflects an intense social engagement. Over the past decade my work evolved around
the subject of ‘woman’, narrated within a personal
context as seen through the lens of my own family
history.” Reflections on subjectivity, identity, memory
and history are reflected in Anoli’s work. Series of work
such as ‘I am the Queen’ (2001), ‘In the Entangled Web’
(2001), ‘Dinner for Six’ (2002 and 2007), ‘Comfort Zone’
(2005) and ‘Comfort Bodies’ (2009) particularly engage with female experiences within domesticity. Works
such as ‘Civilizing Serendib’ (2010) and ‘Swarnabhumi’
(2013) present commentaries on post-colonialism and
the human condition. Her recent works – those undertaken between 2012 and 2014 for the exhibition
‘Memory Keeper’,- deliberate on the erasure of personal and public memory. Her current series of works
entitled ‘Elevated Utopias’ offers observations of the
anxieties of societies in the face of anarchy, globalisation and development.
The current exhibition Serendipity Revealed includes
works entitled ‘I Let My HairLoose’ (2010), ‘Chair I: Silent
Sitters’ (2013) and ‘White Chair II: Entombed’ (2014).
I Let My Hair Loose (Protest Series) brings to the surface the politics of the gaze. It also deals with the
portrayal of female subjectivity in a particular way. Camera, conventionally an extension of the male gaze,
has captured female subjectivity in its most objectified
ways throughout history, and across geographical and
cultural borders. When I look at my own old family
photographs, the female subjects are often left perched on stools or chairs in theatrical settings, their
gazes frozen, looking towards the phallic eye of the
box camera. Their homemaking lives intruded into a
wider canvas which recorded their marginal existence
in history, to be placed on a patriarchal wall dressed up
for the benefit of the viewer. The work ‘Protest’ uses
female hair as a means to arrest the male gaze which
objectifies the female sitter. By covering the face, the
hair obstructs the completion of viewers’ voyeuristic
enjoyment in looking at their female sitter. The use
of hair as a covering for the face gives other layers of
meaning to the work. Hair in its proper place is seen
as a mark of beauty, and hair out of place is seen as
signifying the hysterical, uncontrollable, uncertain and
unpredictable (alluding to Medusa‘s hair). Therefore,
using hair as a face covering goes beyond the idea
of a protective veil. It is more about defying the male
gaze on the woman‘s face - an obstruction that does not allow for
the completion of the voyeur’s process of enjoyment. Therefore
hair-covering manifests as a protest.
Chair I: Silent Sitters and White Chair II: Entombed, both explore the
idea of memory, history and relics. Relics often become objects
of our fetishes. This is because historical memory is inscribed in
objects, where they become residues of moments in time about
which we reminiscence in and out of context. Memory not only
memorises faces but situations and objects, often theatrically positioned within the nostalgias of the keepers of memory. The men
and women sitting on carved high backed chairs next to a teapot,
posing and gesturing, set against backgrounds with theatrical ambience, or a wedding party with multiple rows of people peering
at an unseen stranger in the foreground who would register the
moment, project their positions in history not only through their
personas but also through their associations with the objects with
which they pose.. Handed over from one generation to another,
such relics entomb and ensure the longevity and continuation of
selective moments in history, in this way imprisoning parts of the
present using nostalgia as the agent of such entombments. In these moments, the present becomes a prisoner of the past.
Born 1962
White Chair II: Entombed, 2013
Mahen Perera
Mahen Perera trained in Multi-Disciplinary Design and
Fine Arts, and works mainly with found objects and
material detritus that are often ignored, and seeks
to analyze and challenge the conventional language
used to talk about issues of identity and representation. His works are evocative of the concept of
absence and sometimes even suggestive of archeology in the way that he intimately explores and celebrates the residual.
On first impression his objects remind us of archeological remains or ethnographical objects reminiscent
of cabinet curios left behind from the colonial era, as
seen in his installation produced for the 2014 Colombo Art Biennale. These objects are also evocative of
rubble either left behind by the war, or created for the
renewed beautification of the country. Mahen’s natural sensitivity compounded by his time in the organized sterility of Singapore has further sensitised his
observations of the unsophisticated but active and
vibrant environment of Sri Lanka. This has led him to
create works that capture the essence of constantly
changing vital surroundings; his graphite works particularly exemplify this.
Mahen’s works explore the innate mutability of materials gravitating between paintings and sculpture
- how permutation reconstructs and provides new
stimuli for visual perception while mirroring a ritualistic
reenactment of shifting emotions and feelings. They
fossilize its formative shift of raw elements to create
a dialogue that is investigatory in nature. Eluding their
original physicality, they cross a delicate threshold
between the familiar and the unfamiliar, to find meaning solely through imaginative inference.
“I consider these works as grounds to explore the
desire to trace one’s haptic memory, provoking an
ancestral response, a primal recognition in the perceiver. The attempt has been to capture the viewer in
obscurity, giving liberty to perceive his or her shifting
shapes of materiality.” - Mahen
Born 1977
Untitled 005, Objects, 2014
Pala Pothupitiye
“‘Motherland’ and the idea of safeguarding the motherland, and being proud of it, has created a veil of
ignorance”.
Pala, 2010, a year after the end of the 30-year war
in Sri Lanka.
Pala, coming from a background of traditional craft art
and dance for ritual ceremonies, confronts the compelling political issues raised by identity and the war
in Sri Lanka as he brings certain repressed questions
to the canvas and to his art objects. More recently
known for his map-works, Pala addresses and questions the land’s identity politics, claims of boundaries,
mythical beliefs and history.
„It is only when a land is mapped or cartographed
that scrutiny and documentation of that land is done.
It is only when that has happened, that the inconsistencies and problems will be revealed.“ A Perera
In his current work, Pala focusses on Sri Lanka’s
current post-war situation and so-called development work as well as religious-national extremism.
A prominent feature in these works is the ‘Lion with
Sword’ seen in the national identity card and the flag
of Sri Lanka. His use of colour: religiously violent yellow, blood-shedding red, black and elusively celestial
enigmatic blue, have beauty-destructing meanings.
Through his representation of traditional symbols
and patterns, Sinhala Buddhist, national and traditional
ideas are misused and abused to support extremist
ideas. The rhythmic lines of the Buddha’s robes, the
nimbus and decorative line patterns, all with traditional
characteristics, are drawn in a subversive manner.
Pala’s aim to address the corporate-influenced, profitoriented, highly corrupting and superficial development that has global connections is seen in his barcode works.
The mesmorizng visual attraction of his work is inescapable. It blinds the viewer to the realities of terror,
violence, corruption, rights-violations and injustice
and leads to a visual pleasure similar to what is experienced today in Sri Lanka; no matter how much you
dislike the underlying negativity you cannot escape
consuming the so-called development as well as experiencing the beautification.
Pala unhesitantly and fearlessly sheds a broad beam
of light on what is going on in Sri Lanka today. His
visual voice is fearless of political, cultural, religious
and financial forces.
Pala won the prestigious Hong Kong based Sovereign
Asian Art Prize in 2010.
Lalith Manage
Born 1972
rasmalawa;Nimbus, 2014
Koralegedara Pushpakumara
Pushpakumara received his art education from the
Institute of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Kelaniya, graduating with a BFA in painting in 1997. He also
received a Diploma in Archeology from the Postgraduate Institute of Archeology, University of Kelaniya,
in 2003. At present, he is reading for his MA in Art
History at the same university.
Pushpakumara is a long term member of Theertha
Artist Collective and works in many mediums, including painting, sculpture, and poster, set and costume
design, and has exhibited extensively in Sri Lanka.
In addition, he has taken part in many international
workshops and group exhibitions in India, Sweden,
Pakistan, and the Netherlands. He has received many
local awards, including First Place for Painting in 1995,
as well as at the State Awards Festival 1999.
His latest series of work, ‘Goodwill Hardware’, has
been exhibited at Theertha Red Dot Gallery, the 2012
& 2014 Colombo Art Biennale and at Hempel Galleries
in Colombo, and has been highly acclaimed and well
received.
Wall Plug (16), 2013
‘Barbed Wire’ 2014
“My current works share some visual traits with a
trend that emerged with the art of the 90’s, referred
to as ‘Political Kitsch’. I began to work with kitsch
material taking it as a particular system of knowledge
production to intervene with contemporary social issues of Sri Lanka, especially in response to the war
that ended in 2009 and the populist rhetoric that
bolstered the idea of ‘war’. In this work, my attempt
is to capture the plight of the Tamil refugees forced
to spend time in refugee camps after the war and the
apathy of the people in the south of Sri Lanka to this
situation – the apathy of the south to the suffering
of the Tamils affected by the last days of the war.
Here the ‘barbed wire’ is made to look ‘pleasant’ by
illumination from inside, as if it is trying to hide its
sinister reality.
Koralegedara Pushpakumara 2013
Pushpakumara lives and works in Colombo.
Born 1968
Barb wire light installation, 2014
Pradeep Thalawatta
Pradeep studied Fine Art and Design and received his
BFA in painting in Lahore before joining the Theertha
Artists’ Collective which influenced his practice and saw
it evolve with the 90’s trend. From 2004, Thalawatta’s
artistic investigations have incorporated highly urban
situations: industrial materials, mass-production, pop/
celebrity icons and personal episodes of his life. He
was dealing with absorption in urban allure, commenting on consumer anxieties and feelings of isolation
and loneliness in the big city.
In 2010 Pradeep was invited by the University of Jaffna
as an assistant lecturer in Art and Design. As a Sinhalese man coming from the South of Sri Lanka in
a country that had only recently ended its civil war,
the three years he spent teaching at the University in
Jaffna in the North, a predominantly Tamil area, made
a dramatic impact on his art practice. A significant part
of Thalawatta’s methodology was simply to listen and
observe the people around him, interacting with students and colleagues being an integral part of the shaping of his experiences and perceptions.
“Jaffna was ridden by a cruel 30-year war. The postwar era construction work such as rebuilding roads
caught my attention. Being sensitive to the people and
places surrounding me, my art-works are motivated by
the emotions and feelings of people in the context of
the complex, convoluted politics of post-war.”
The works that Thalawatta presented in the 2012
Colombo Art Biennale on the theme ‘Becoming’, expressed the changing landscapes of Jaffna where he
produced the hypnotising, ‘Disappearing and Reappearing Landscape’, a mirage of a landscape that at
the same time almost is and almost was, seemingly
simultaneously appearing and disappearing in front of
one’s eyes.
The idea of changing landscapes was carried through
into his solo show ‘A Different Road’ in 2013. The
roads that Thalawatta focused on in this exhibition
are mainly the ones in the Jaffna area. These are the
roads Jaffna people use in their day to day lives, as
did the artist when in Jaffna. Through his dialogues,
Thalawatta encountered despair and a feeling of loss,
still felt several years after the end of war. It seems
circle in which the public could walk around. These
panels represented digital images of the changing
face of the city of Bangalore. Pradeep raises questions about the city, environment, culture, landscape,
migrants, social disparities, gender and chauvinism, in
a space designedto conceal and create private space
in a public space.
Pradeep Thalawatta lives and works in Colombo and is
currently undertaking his MA in Lahore
Born 1979
as if these new infrastructural changes are not wholeheartedly embraced. A sense of distance between
the people and political authorities seems to prevail in
varying degrees. For them, physical and socio-cultural
landscapes are being altered without consent. But in
all this, a determination to rebuild towards a stronger
future is still present.’
Lalith Manage
‘Roadscape’ 2013
Pradeep places himself ‘strikingly’, standing in the midst
of construction work in Jaffna with mouth, eyes and
ears blocked by his own hair, alluding to what is allowed and not allowed to be seen heard and spoken
about. He presents himself in a minimal red and white
striped vest, which relates to the Hindu Tamil temple
walls. Deterministically, the Tamils in Sri Lanka see ‘A
Different Road’ to the future, achieving their own aspirations. Thalalwattha refers to the potential for further
development, with the social political changes of Jaffna as well as the country.
“City Circle” 2011
Thalawatta’s interests in the ever changing landscapes
in South Asia developed further during a residency in
Bangalore, where Thalawatta created a large installation consisting of thirty curtains assembled in a large
Roadscape, 2012
Sri Lankan contemporary Art:
From Art of Resistance to Art
of Today
Anoli Perera
Most visible and continuing contemporary trends
in Sri Lankan visual art emerged during the
1990s as a reaction to the highly problematic
socio-political situation the country was experiencing at the time. A society marred with largescale violence , unsympathetic and brutal responses by the state to individual and collective
fears and anxieties and mismanaged economic
policies, the artists of the late 1980s and early
1990s were at the edge of an art discipline that
failed to reconcile their lived realities, dilemmas,
and their need to express. They were straddled
with an art of yesterday that had residues of
academic realism and romanticism borrowed
from British colonial art and localized modernist
trends introduced by the 43 Group that romanticised an utopian ideal of the village, the nation
and the human body which dominated post
independent art. Faced with this situation, the
artists of the 90s decade needed an epistemic
break in the historical evolution of art in order
to usher in a change that would transform the
way art is perceived and the way artists defined
their professional personalities within society.
Therefore, the ‘90s Art Trend’ emerged challenging every aspect of art-making – the role
of artists, the art methodologies and even the
episteme of the field – which created a space
for installation, performance, object art, collage
and other variations of art-making to germinate
and blossom. In this new creative space, artists
were able to draw attention to – without shame and inhibitions – their personal experiences, identity crises, anxieties, sexual politics and
private fantasies. Their art discussed social and
political issues via personal experience. Within
the 90s trend, the artist’s persona was transformed from the reclusive, spiritually based, sedate, non-committal, temperamental genius to
that of an anxiety ridden, restless, critical, and
confrontational risk-taker. Therefore, the art
that was produced during the decade of 1990s
presented an intense socio-cultural critique of
the dominant political process and its involvement with violence. Within this overall discourse,
it also offered a relentless critique of the role of
religious institutions and the consumer culture
of the newly globalized society.
The decade that followed also saw the visual
art field giving room to nurture the idea of the
‘alternative’ as the ‘critical other’ to the conventional and established art. During this period one
could see progressive artists and individuals coming together to support the newly-emerging
radicalism in art by establishing alternate art
spaces and group efforts. Some of them became catalysts for the emergent new art. As an
attempt to confront the archaic curriculum and
insular methods of teaching in the government
art school now known as University for Visual
and Performing Arts, the Vibhavi Academy of
Fine Arts (VAFA), was established by a group
of artists. VAFA also became the rallying point
for the radical artists in the initial stage of 90s
Art Trend. The Heritage Gallery established by
an art philanthropist Ajitha de Costa, showcased
experimental art of the 90s during those early
crucial years when art establishment shunned
the explosive thematics and dark aesthetics of
the new art. In 1997, the exhibition ‘New Approaches’ presenting a collection of 90s art held at
the National Art Gallery of Colombo curated by
Sharmini Pereira, then a young curator based
in the United Kingdom, helped to endorse the
emerging new trends in contemporary Sri Lankan art. In 1999, ‘No Order Group’ was formed
by proponents and artists closely associated
with the ‘90s Trend which issued a manifesto
declaring their position on art during a seminal
exhibition of their work organized at VAFA. The
new art were patronized by art collectors such
as Dominic and Nazreen Sansoni by presenting
a number of innovative exhibitions of artists
such as Jagath Weerasinghe, Chandraguptha
Thenuwara, Anoli Perera, Muhanned Cader, K.
Pushpakumara, Kingsley Goonatilake in their
Gallery 706 (now known as Barefoot Gallery).
The Sansonis who enthusiastically endorsed
the 90s art were also the primary collectors
of the new art during this initial period, and
purchased most of the key artworks of ‘90s
Trend for their private collection. George Keyt
Foundation, a private art foundation established in the name of well-known 43 Group
artist, George Keyt opened up a platform for
emerging artists to show their work through
their large scale annual exhibitions and art
events such as ‘Young Contemporaries’ and
‘Kala Pola’. In a local context where gallery
sponsorships were meager, these events
became much sought after opportunities for
young artists, which in some cases helped
launch their professional careers. International cultural institutions such as the British
Council, the Goethe Institute and the Alliance
Francaise supported the new experimental
art. Significantly, their involvement in the art
scene along with the George Keyt Foundation established the idea of international art
exchanges through a series of international
workshops called ‘Art Link,’ which were regularly held from 1999 for a number of years.
International art workshops became a regular event in the Colombo art scene during the
decade of 2000 which generated considerable enthusiasm for international art exchanges. Such international art exchanges and
networking beyond Sri Lanka was pursued
intensely by the art initiative Theertha International Artists’ Collective established in 2000
by a progressive group of artists. Theertha,
through its regular art residencies and workshops supported by the South Asia Network
of Artists (SANA), a regional art network established in collaboration with artists’ groups
in India (Khoj International), Nepal (Sutra), Bangladesh (Britto Art Trust) and Pakistan(Vasl)
have managed to work intensely to connect
with regional and international art communities. In many ways, artists’ mobility within
South Asia and beyond supported by SANA
and others became one of the main conduits to connect with the exterior world for
Sri Lankan artists. The camaraderie that was
nurtured through these links with international
artists, particularly with South Asian artists, kept
the energies of radical local artists intact when
endorsement for their art from the conservative
local art establishment was absent.
The first decade of the new millennium saw
further expansion in this emergent forms of
art. With the conclusion of the 30-year armed
conflict in May 2009, Sri Lanka experienced a
sigh of relief on the stoppage of the massive
human and material destruction that had continued for so long which paralyzed as well as
brutalized the entire society. This was a major
situational change that allowed artists to connect and work together much easily with the
North and North East which was relatively inaccessible during the war. At the same time,
many members of Theertha, some of whom
were instrumental in initiating the ‘90s Art Trend,
have been active in sustaining the criticality
and experimental nature of their art-making,
presenting extremely innovative and seminal
exhibitions. Jagath Weerasinghe’s exhibition,
‘Celestial Fervor’ in 2009, presented a deeper
and more sophisticated elaboration of societal violence, a thematic he has engaged with
since his 1994 show, ‘Anxiety’ that essentially
provided the parameters for ‘90s art. Similar attempts have been seen in recent exhibitions by
other Theertha artists such as Sarath Kumarasiri
(‘Kovils Temples’, 2009) and K. Pushpakumara
(‘Goodwill Hardware’, 2009 & 2012) as well as the
younger generation of artists, Anura Krishantha (‘Chairs’, 2007), Bandu Manamperi (‘Numbed’,
2009), Sanath Kalubadana (‘My Friend the Soldier’, 2007) and Pala Pothupitiya (‘My Ancestral
Dress and My ID’, 2008).
In 2009, the same year the armed conflict ended in Sri Lanka also interestingly marked the
1st biennale in Colombo named ‘Colombo Art
Biennale’ (CAB) with the theme ‘Imagining Peace’
followed by the 2nd Colombo Art Biennale in
2012 under the theme ‘Being’. Much expanded
from its initial attempt in 2009, the 2013 Colombo Art Biennale curated by Suresh Jayaram (In-
dia) and Roman Burka (Austria) brought in an
impressive collection of established as well
as young international artists to exhibit their
works alongside Sri Lankan artists. Colombo Art
Biennale, an idea formulated by the artist Jagath
Weerasinghe along with Annoushka Hempel,
both founding members of the biennale, have
ensured the emergence of its own particularity
and format. Held under much strained economic
conditions due to unforthcoming local funding,
a situation faced by many novice international
art events, the Colombo Art Biennales immediately gave much needed international visibility
to Sri Lankan contemporary art while creating
an awareness within local audiences about its
nature and form. Within this overall scenario, the
Sri Lankan contemporary art scene continues
to evolve and mature, retaining its own unique
brands of radicalism and innovation.
History and Memory
Dealing with the perception and construction of
the past, both memory and history - though
phenomenally different from each other,- interpret the subjective reflections of our being in
specific contexst and temporalities. Some see
history as a contested space within which many
tugs-of-war have been fought to lay claim to
a subjective past for a subjective present that
could define a subjective future. Shrouded
within academic exercises, political rhetoric and
archeological investigation for its authenticity
and endorsement, history somehow remains
embedded in collective memories of a larger
than life magnitude.
Memory on the other hand remains within individuals and communities as an exercise of
nostalgia and remembrance of a past mostly
as an ‘emotional experience’ recounted in a
totally personal context or a performative public context. We are all burdened by and bound
within a certain history which is remembered,
refreshed, re-interpreted and re-narrated by
the mediation of a memory that is individual
and collective. Imbued both with interpretive
and reconstructive possibilities, history writers, memory keepers, interpreters and commentators of history, society and culture
often collate their visions, hallucinations and
interpretations of ‘truths’ about life, mythicizing parts of history through a memorializing
process. We construct our ‘truths’ through
selective histories and selective memories.
Therefore, we make our own versions of
history through historical interpretations that
over time might well become part of a larger
history.
Within the discourse of visual art, artists have
been unhesitating in interrogating both history and memory and often their interventions and engagements with historicity and
remembrance have brought out narratives
of resistance, voices of disquiet and foreboding aesthetics where society is made ‘not
to forget’. They have held their viewers in
guilt, remorse, exasperation and anger. In
the hands of artists, temporality is extended,
suspended or warped, thereby letting history lose its linearity of progression. Allegory
and metaphors in their aesthetic exercises
add layers to the already subjective memories and selective histories framed via multiple interpretations. Artists become memory
keepers, narrators and documenters of an
interpretive history ciphered through an aesthetic and conceptual veneer to be read and
reread as art.
-Anoli Perera-
Acknowledgements
Asian Art Newspaper
John Hollingsworth
Joe Pinto
Reginald Aloysius
Daniel Hutton
Elizabetta Pisu
British Council
Laura Hutton
Pala Pothupitiye
Sarah Callaghan
Vimukthi Jayasundera
Koralegedara Pushpakumara
Carlton Club
Ursula Keith
Niru Ratnam
Colombo Art Biennale
Janananda Laksiri
Rockland Ceylon Arrack
Alexi Cory-Smith
Cora de Lang
Hasita Senanayake
D&D London
Jill Macdonald
Sophie Simpson
Pradeep Dularaj
Bandu Manamperi
SOAS Unsiversity of London
Echo House Printers
Lalith Manage
SriLankan Airlines
Liz Fernando
Nina Mangalanayagam
Genevieve Sorrell
Anna Flick
Dhanushka Marasinghe
Puja Srivastava
Shevanthie Goonesekra
Annabelle Muazu
Pradeep Thalawatta
Kingsley Gunatillake
Joy Onyejiako
Fru Tholstrup
Manoj Gunewardena
Jasmin Pelham
Monica Vinader
Desmond Gunewardena
Pelham Communications
Eduard Hempel
Anoli Perera
Hempel Galleries
Mahen Perera
The ‚Serendipity Revealed‘ team wishes to thank all its sponsors, volunteers, patrons, friends and of course artists who have all helped make this project possible.
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Aga Khan Museum
Opens in Toronto
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ON 18 SEPTEMBER, the Aga
Khan Museum in Toronto is opening
its doors to the public for the first
time. It is the first museum in North
America to be dedicated to the arts of
Islam and Islamic cultures. Founded
by His Highness the Aga Khan, the
museum
has
an
exceptional
permanent collection, which The
pieces in the collection have been
collected by the Aga Khan and
members of his family for a number
of generations. Housed in a specially
designed new building designed by
the Japanese architect Fumihiko
Maki, the museum comprises
galleries, exhibition spaces, classrooms,
a reference library, as well as a stateof-the-art auditorium. The Toronto
museum complements the mission of
the Global Centre of Pluralism in
Ottawa, which was also set up by the
Aga Khan in collaboration with the
Canadian government.
The new director of the museum is
Dr Henry Kim, who was previously
Project Director for the Oxford
Ashmolean Museum’s redevelopment
project, which was completed in 2009.
He also supervised the redevelopment
of the Ashmolean’s Egypt Galleries,
which was completed in November
2011. Dr Kim holds degrees in
classical archaeology from Harvard
University and the University of
Oxford. The curatorial staff at the Aga
Khan museum consists of a head
curator and three assistant curators.
In the two permanent galleries tup
to 200 objects will be on display at any
one time from the collection. Major
temporary exhibitions concerning the
Islamic world will also be presented in
historic, geographic, or thematic
themes. These exhibitions will use the
permanent collections, but also draw
upon private collections and
institutional holdings from all parts of
the world. Smaller exhibitions on
specific artists and topics are also
planned to be hosted in the temporary
exhibition space.
The Museum collection spans over
one thousand years of history. The
Museum will include miniatures and
manuscripts collected by the late
Prince Sadruddin and Princess
Catherine Aga Khan, and Islamic
artefacts and works of art that His
Highness the Aga Khan and members
of his family have collected over
several generations.
The two inaugural exhibitions are
In Search of the Artist: Signed Drawings
and Paintings from the Aga Khan
Museum Collection,
from
18
September to 16 November and The
Garden of Ideas: Contemporary Art
from Pakistan, from 18 September to
18 January 2015.
Since 2007, whilst waiting for the
new museum to be built, selected
pieces from the museum’s collection
have been on tour in Europe and
Asia, with more than 1.5 million
people visiting these travelling
exhibitions held in Italy, United
Kingdom, France, Portugal, Spain,
Germany, Turkey, Russia, Malaysia
and Singapore.
This museum was originally
Qanun, Fi’l-Tibb,
(Canon of
Medicine), volume
5, Ibn Sina
(980-1037),
Iran or Iraq,
1052, opaque
watercolour and
ink on paper
Folio: 21.2 x
16.4 cm, from
the permanent
collection
conceived by His Highness the Aga
Khan as an educational institution
detailing the cultural, artistic,
intellectual and religious heritage of
Muslim civilisations. The long term
goal behind the museum is to
promote religious and cultural
pluralism, while also presenting
Islamic arts and cultures that reflect
the historic geographic and cultural
diversity of Muslim societies from
Spain in the West to China in the
East. His Highness has stated: ‘One
news in brief
Aga Khan Museum
Opens in Toronto
NATIONAL GALLERY, SINGAPORE
DBS Bank have announced a gift of S$25 million to
the National Gallery Singapore earlier this year.
Through a permanent display of fundamental works
from the 19th century to present day from the
National Collection, the DBS Singapore Gallery will
enable visitors to experience a comprehensive overview
of Singapore art. It will serve as a key component of
Singapore art education as well as an important
platform for studying and presenting the cultural and
aesthetic identity of Singapore. Last year, DBS
donated 26 artworks by Singapore’s leading artists to
the Gallery. These comprised works of various media
by notable artists such as Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen
Chong Swee, Anthony Poon, Tan Swie Hian, Ong
Kim Seng, and Thomas Yeo.
New Gallery
New Address
ON KAWARA OBITUARY
On Kawara, the Japanese-born conceptual artist best
known for making date paintings for the past 48 years,
passed away last July, at the age of 81. Kawara began
making his date pictures, known collectively as the
Today series, on 4 January 1966 in New York and
continued to work on them for the rest of his life.
Each hand-painted work was completed on the date
depicted and most were packaged with newspaper
clippings from local publications. The Guggenheim in
New York is currently planning a retrospective of his
work, expected to open in February 2015.
PHOTO SHANGHAI
news in brief
Inside
NATIONAL GALLERY, SINGAPORE
5 rue Visconti - 75006 Paris
m. +33 (0)6 09 76 60 68
www.mingei-arts-gallery.com
The inaugural edition of Photo Shanghai - the first
international art fair dedicated to photography in
China takes place from 5 to 7 September at the
Shanghai Exhibition Centre, and aims to establish the
most professional and international platform for fine
art photography in the Asia-Pacific region. The fair is
also hosting the first Beijing Photo Biennale’s
exhibition: Contemporary Photography in China,
2009-2014, curated by Wang Huangsheng, its artistic
director and director of CAFA Art Museum, and
considered the foremost curator of photography in
China. More information on www.photoshanghai.org.
of the lessons we have learned in
recent years is that the world of
Islam and the Western world need
to work together much more
effectively at building mutual
understanding – especially as these
cultures interact and intermingle
more actively. We hope that this
museum will contribute to a better
understanding of the peoples of
Islam in all of their religious, ethnic,
linguistic and social diversity.’ Never
has this been more true.
Inside
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ASIAN ART
Aga Khan Museum
Opens in Toronto
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Aga Khan Museum
Opens in Toronto
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