SEVEN CONVERSATIONS

SEVEN CONVERSATIONS curated by sharmini pereira and t. shanaathanan

10.07.15 - 24.07.15

What does it mean to be a practicing contemporary artist? Beyond motivation, techniques, influences and intention what else is involved? To be an artist today involves sustaining a practice where you are actively involved in the process of art making. Though this sounds straightforward it is probably one of the greatest challenges to face any artist no matter how outstanding they may be. It is probably also the reason why so many artists end up choosing to move into more stable career paths after they graduate, favoring a job in advertising, teaching or IT rather than enduring what it means to set up a practice and sustain it. Yet why should the process of making art end up being any different to any other profession?

As an audience we are accustomed to seeing the final artwork by an artist, often in a gallery; on occasion in a studio. But what does it entail to have a studio, let alone a gallery, least one that acts on an artist’s behalf, represents you to collectors, nurtures your creativity, exercises your critical sensibilities and supports your professional development through discussion, opportunities and introductions? What are the mechanisms that encourage you to take risks when you are outside the freedom of an educational structure? How do you research your work be this watching films, travelling, reading or any other number of activities that develop ideas when you are not supported to do so? Such are the questions that face all new graduates when they complete their Fine Art training. When we decided to curate this exhibition these questions also informed our starting point.

For many years we have both talked, along with many other like-minded individuals, about the state of the art teaching system in Sri Lanka, and the lack of government support for professional contemporary art initiatives, arts organizations and grant giving. After working with several Fine Art students from around the country on an earlier project, Mobile

Library1 we began to follow the progress of these young artists’ careers. Following their graduation in July 2014 we watched to see how they would sustain themselves in a country where there is little means of support for young artists. In Sri Lanka nearly 50% of artists in the country come from lower middle-income households and/or from rural areas. Our questions continued and our conversations with these artists grew. How can artists who live and work outside the art-market in Colombo be noticed was something that we encountered in our conversations with all of them.

What kind of changes must we make we were asked. Will an art teaching job in a government school further their career as a practicing artist or will it stifle the experimentation they were taught when they were Fine Art students concerned us to think about what other opportunities existed. For those that took jobs in teaching we told ourselves that at least they had a job, the same cannot be said for the others. Looking back at the teaching and curatorial work we had been involved with we wondered if all the effort directed towards helping them to develop the tools to think critically and conceptually with skill and expertise was in vain. Beyond the impact on individual artists we finally asked ourselves what was at stake for the country as a whole and if this merited trying to do something.

This exhibition is an attempt to introduce the Colombo art world to the recently passed out graduates from the University of Jaffna. All the works in this exhibition have been made especially for this exhibition as a result of over nine months of conversations between the seven artists and us. In the beginning nearly the entire batch of twenty graduates from the Art and Design Unit of the University of Jaffna showed interest in participating. In the end 13 artists dropped out due to either lack of funds to buy materials, the pressure of settling down and getting married, family interference or the offer of civil service teaching posts.

Of the 7 artists in this show only N. Savasen is represented by a series of paintings. His luridly painting canvases capture a child-like or naïve

1 See http://blogs.guggenheim.org/author/sharminipereira/

sensibility that stands in stark contrast to the graphic and explicit nature of the subject he explores. Similarly the exhibition is notable for including one video work by P. Pushpakanthan. Lasting just 30 seconds it shows the headshot of a screaming figure in a darkened confined space, howling in what appears to be pain or anxiety. The video is accompanied by three ink drawings titled Self-portrait I-III. From afar they show a series of upturned beds and tables suspended in mid air swirling in space like debris in a deluge. Up close the pieces of furniture appear to be wrapped in bandages or strips of cloth as if they have been taken hostage or subjected to torture. The mood of the work, like the video, is intentionally unsettling.

By comparison G. Samvathini’s series of drawing scrolls play with another kind of psychological tension. Mapping her journey from Puttalam, where she lives, to Jaffna where she studied, the works can similarly be seen as self-portraits as she moved from one place to another back and forth over a period of 5 years. Her use of non-traditional art materials and found objects embraces an aesthetics of the everyday, where the materials and medium are already ascribed with uses and commonplace meanings. M. Vijitharan’s employment of seashells and farmer’s hoes, like S. Hanusha’s appropriation of teabags and tea strainers operate under the same aesthetic premise. Through their choice of materials both artists, introduce a powerful means via which to talk about locality and place; employing materials that are socio-politically inscribed. Hanusha’s delicately rendered drawings upon tea bags and strainers, arranged as miniature tableaus continue her interests into the plight of estate worker families. Vijitharan’s work likewise builds a narrative around a single object – the farmer’s hoe or mann vertty – as a symbol of displacement faced by the farming community during the last stages of the war.

As with much of the work in this exhibition the memory of the war looms in the shadows. In the case of K. Thabendran the memory of objects looted from his home during the war give rise to an image in which the lost object has been physically cut out of the photo-frame. The result is intentionally meant to make you aware that something

has been cut, in haste, and removed in order to disturb the homestead where everything else remains in place. His photo-cut out series also capture an element of humor removing the potential of being seen as a victim of circumstance with gentle defiance as evidenced in the work that shows a well and water depicted with a missing plastic bucket. The mundane juxtaposition of what gives life – water and a well – with what makes a life, a plastic bucket, is hauntingly humorous. Amongst the many objects that were lost, stolen or damaged during the conflict in the north, was the letterpress printing blocks belonging to Krishnapriya’s father who was a printer. Her delicate, almost imperceptible, series of drawings utilize the printing blocks that remain from her father’s print studio. Using no color or inks she imprints small white sheets of paper with images and letters by hand. The resulting works recall memories of her mother’s life by blind embossing marks, dots, lines and selected motifs, drawn from her father’s print stamps. Though the paper surface is encoded with stories their visibility remains hidden.

As with any exhibition one of the most important aims is to engage with an audience. It is our intention and hope that the audiences for this exhibition will begin conversations and stimulate other questions that carry on from where we initially began.

Sharmini Pereira and T. ShanaathananJuly 2015

M. VIJITHARAN b.1985

Whenever the farmers of Vanni were displaced, their hoes or mann vertties always followed them. Even in the hard realities of displacement the farmers’ efforts to cultivate never ended. The same hoe that helped the famers to prepare the land and produce food was also used to make bunkers as well as bury bodies during the peak period of the war. But when they reached their final destination – Mullivaikal, the sandy land was not friendly enough to cultivate, nor hospitable to making bunkers. The war ended. When they dug the land to cultivate it the hoes got stuck into the piles of empty bullets, shell covers and even human skeletons. They brought back the smell of the war. Before the war they brought back the smell of the paddy fields.

M. VIJITHARAN, 2015Motherland II-IV, Found ammunition, wood, dimensions variable

Left: M. VIJITHARAN, 2015, Motherland I (Detail)Sea shells and ink, dimensions variable

Right: M. VIJITHARAN, 2015, Motherland VMixed media on paper, 42 x 30cm

P. PUSHPAKANTHAN b.1989

My work is a psychological interrogation of an experience connected to a cruel incident in my personal life. While my works give me a sense of self-satisfaction they also lead me to search for myself. This keeps me moving. The mode of searching and its findings is at the basis of my work.

P. PUSHPAKANTHAN, 2015, Self-Portrait I, Gel pen on paper, 70 x 101cm

N. SAVESAN b.1989

At the time I did not know whether it was right or wrong. But I had to get it at any cost even if I had to steal. It meant risking my self-respect but also my life. I was daring enough to be a thief. With fear and nervousness of becoming a thief and I engaged in secret love affairs and sex. This became the content of my paintings.

N. SAVESAN, 2015, Secret Lovers VI, Acrylic on canvas, 92 x 68cm

N. SAVESAN, 2015, Secret Lovers VI, Acrylic on canvas, 92 x 68cm

S. HANUSHA b.1988

My work attempts to share the struggle faced by upcountry plantation workers in Sri Lanka. This struggle has existed for over a hundred years without a solution or public attention. Although we live in the highlands of the country closer to the clouds and sky our living conditions are so poor. We contribute to the country’s economy and suffer hard-ship in return. In these works I explore the plight of the tea estate workers who work hard to get their daily wages, contend with nature; landslides, leeches and climate only to bear the strain of what life dictates on account of their work. One day’s full pay is only paid if a plantation worker completes working for a full 18 days. This payment is not sufficient to look after their daily needs. They live in ‘line’ houses and have to send their young children to child care centres (pulla kambara). Children not only miss their families, they also miss the chance to re-ceive a proper school education and usually end up working as child laborers and in child marriages.

I use locally-used handmade strainers and tea bags as sculptural ma-terials. Together they conceptually embody the strain suffered by this community, which seeps into every aspect of their lives along with that of their offspring, like an indelible stain that marks you for life.

S. HANUSHA, 2015Stain I-IX, Tea bags, glass beaker, strainer and ink, dimensions variable

S. HANUSHA, 2015Child Mother, Tea bags and ink, 37.5 x 21cm

S. HANUSHA, 2015Stain I-IX, Tea bags, glass beaker, strainer and ink, dimensions variable

T. KIRISHNAPIRIYA b.1987

Dots make lines. Lines make diagrams. Lines also show the direction of my life, my past, my dreams, my selection, my gains and losses. By putting dots and making marks I tried to trace and also inscribe the tracks of my past, future and present.

T. KRISHNAPRIYA, 2015, Impression I, Embossed paper, 21 x 30cm

K. THABENDRAN b.1988

Although the thirty years of war came to an end, its effects are still alive. Many people were forced to move away from their home to safeguard their lives. But my family struggled to stay to safeguard our house and household things. But in the end we had to move. When we came back all our household items were gone and the house was badly damaged. Bits and pieces of the house existed. By burying all our memories of home, we were able to build a new house. But we could not get all the household items back. Therefore the sense of what is missing is always a cause for pain. This reality transferred us into another zone of conflict. My works talk about the new reality and what is missing through the act of cutting out of photographs. Though we have water and a well – our well bucket was taken. This missing element, like all the other items that were taken, interrupts our reality, even though the war has ended.

K.THABENDRAN, 2015, Lost/Loot IV, Photo collage on paper, 27.5 x 41cm

G. SAMVARTHINI b.1989

My recent works explore the experience of place in the relation to memory. The content of my work deals with five years of continuous back and forth travel from Puttalam to Jaffna passing through Anuradhapura, Vavuniya and Kilinochchi whilst I was studying. The work is made up of five district maps that correspond to these cities. The work tracks the changing cityscapes as the country developed in the post-war years. The landscape is shown changing as you turn the handle but it is held under tension by the mechanism I have used to display it. I used ink pen and water color because these were the only materials I had access to.

G. SAMVARTHINI, 2015, Journey I, Ink on paper, tin box, 10 x 20 x 35cm

G. SAMVARTHINI, 2015, Vavuniya, Ink on paper, 21 x 29.7cm

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