Sri Lankan Contemporary Art

Serendipity RevealedContemporar y Sr i Lankan Ar t

Curated by Annoushka Hempel

9th October - 20th December 2014

B R U N E I G A L L E R Y, LO N D O N

Foreword

SriLankan Airlines, as the national carrier of Sri Lan-ka, is immensely pleased to support the budding Sri Lankan artists whose selected works of art are featured in the much anticipated exhibition, “Se-rendipity Revealed.”, unveiled at the Brunei Gallery, London.

“Serendipity Revealed” presents an assortment of Sri Lankan contemporary art, displayed in various mediums such as sculpture, installation, video, pain-ting 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 ex-plore 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 inspi-ration 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 tire-lessly 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 miles-tone 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 illustra-ted in what you view today, in the near future.

Mr. Kapila ChandrasenaChief Executive OfficerSriLankan Airlines

Curators’ Note

SERENDIPITY REVEALED: A POST WAR PERSPECTIVE

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 his-tory. 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 per-sonal 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 fea-ture significantly as a theme in many of the ar-tists’ works, particularly those stemming from the 90’s trend. This is evident from the works of Pushpakuma-ra - filled with the motif of barbed wire, an in-cessant memory of a boy growing up surroun-ded 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 po-sition 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

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 ex-periencing a transient and unknown future. Anoli Perera takes on the role of the female - tradition and traditional values in relation to gender, colo-nialist remains and memory keeping. The expan-se of her memory stretching defines her need to recall in her work, the period of colonial Sri Lan-ka (Ceylon) of which her parents were a part. These narratives evolve with a younger genera-tion of artists who speak less of the political civil conflict and war, and more of the socio-political conflicts and tensions driven by traditional va-lues. 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 linge-ring fear of the recent past, the looming eyes that keep watch over this new and unfamiliar

Annoushka Hempel

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

ARTisTsuncertainty 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 repre-senting 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 issu-es of society. Vimukthi Jayasundera, an artist who uses film as his medium, takes a contem-porary view of social traditional practices. His work plunges the viewer into a visual feast that erases the borders between fiction and docu-mentary to deliver an experience of a culture directly to the senses.‘Serendipity Revealed’ attempts to further unra-vel stories through the visual narratives of the diaspora and views from another world.Mahen Perera’s objects - sometimes reminis-cent of cabinet curios left behind from the co-lonial era - but also evocative of rubble either left behind by the war or newly created for de-velopment. His time spent away in Singapore have impacted on his sensitivities to the beauty of ‘his’ country in all its rawnessReginald Aloysius’ experiences – being of Sri Lankan Tamil descent from Jaffna but having lived in the UK all his life - have led him to inves-tigate cultural change and diaspora through the exploration of the iconography of Sri Lankan and Southern Indian temples, thereby investiga-ting the social agency inherent in any cultural choice. Nina Mangalanayagam, also of Sri Lan-kan 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 iden-tities, 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 photogra-phy, identity, history and the notion of memory occupy within non-western cultures. She looks at identity, heritage and the differences in per-ceptions towards cultural and social doctrines and dogmas. Finally, further unfolding and revealing the sto-ries of a country, would not be complete wit-hout the view and perspective of the visitor.Cora de Lang, a travelling artist, spent six ye-ars working in Sri Lanka. Her work spins ta-les, combining her views and observations as a nomadic traveller, moving from one culture to another. Her airline flight bags, beautifully ‘decorated’, subconsciously and perhaps inad-vertently 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 immen-se change.

By Annoushka Hempel

Reginald Aloysius

Reginald S. Aloysius is a British-born artist of Sri Lan-kan Tamil descent whose background has informed his work exploring themes of globalisation, emigra-tion, and the destruction of tradition through deve-lopment and modernisation. Through exploration of the iconography of Sri Lankan and Southern Indian temples, Aloysius investigates the social agency in-herent 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 relation-ship between drawing and painting”.

The Hindu temples in the work are examples of Dravi-dian 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 migra-tory routes. The ‘paintings’ are maps that pick out the routes of contemporary Tamil culture. Originally maps were intuitive and symbolic rather than carto-graphic: 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 internatio-nal 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 temp-les and modern skyscrapers, offices and apartments. These vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines (scaffol-ding of new buildings) have the quality of an invasi-on.” 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 program-me 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 Mo-dern 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 Colom-bo.

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 whe-ther 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 imagi-nation.

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 conversa-tional 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 pal-pable 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 re-mains within me. The Imprint of Lovers is a personal reflection on the perception of sexuality in a Sou-th 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 ho-tel 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 environ-ment, tells the story of an unbearable dramatic and melancholic catharsis that culminates in my destructi-ve longing to have a presence.

Born 1982 Khrisnikaa, 2014

Bulletbook 1, 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 Fa-culty 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 ab-road, most recently in France, London, Lincoln (UK), Asia House London, Sojo Galley Japan, Pakistan, In-dia, 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 In-stallations can be found in several private collections including the President’s Collection of Contemporary Art.

‚Book art” “Unfortunately you cannot have the pleasure of rea-ding 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.

“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

Vimukthi Jayasundara

Vimukthi Jayasundara is an award-winning young Sri Lankan director known for his surreal films that erase the borders between fiction and documenta-ry, 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 interna-tionally. His third feature ‘Mushrooms’ (2011) was se-lected 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, 2005Neither war nor peace, just the wind blowingGod is absent, but still the sun risesOver a lonely home between two trees in a forsa-ken landA hand emerges from the water, begging for helpA legendary woman searches for loveA soldier kills a stranger, and is burdened by guilt

Between Two Worlds, 2009The 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’

Combustion, 2014

Janananda Laksiri

Laksiri, who stems from a fine arts and design edu-cation, has been driven to explore the world of elec-tronics, IT and 2D/3D graphic software. The result reveals powerful digital art and striking multimedia installations.

His ‘Screaming Elergy’ works (2012) portray urban-scapes crowed by power poles and wires criss-cros-sing along the line of view, across which man swings through the precarious and treacherous events that life delivers. Man also treads carefully along the right-rope of life, through the challenges and chaos of the urban jungle. He is dwarfed by daunting symbolic creatures such as bats and crows and representa-tions of religious symbols that dominate, manipulate and control man’s free identity.

His ‘Mirror Images’ work, created for the 2012 Colom-bo 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 vie-wer beyond personal despair to focus on the broa-der issues of society. His works unashamedly force the question of ‘Who do we need to become to survive?’

Born 1979

Cora de Lang

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.

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, mys-ticism 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 seriesThe spatial template for her paintings comprises seve-ral regions, including South America, Africa, the Indian sub-continent, and Europe. Her work is multi-cultural and multi-religious, for it contains elements of Christia-nity, Hinduism, Buddhism and animism. Anoli Perera wri-tes, “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 conti-nents, 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 stimu-lating, given the deeply symbolic, ritualistic and iconic aspects of her work.

Senaka Abeyratne

‘Flight bags’

If you have been a passenger on any flight you may have found these in front of you along with the in-flight 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 installati-on. 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 uni-versity. 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.“

‘Lady Bags’

“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 sensiti-ve artistic understanding.”

Matthias Mühling

‘Envelopes’

It was while de Lang was living in Nigeria (1995-1999) that she started to collect envelopes containing im-portant messages for her, which in turn inspired her to adorn these keepers of memories. “I was conscious of their presence and the long jour-neys they had undertaken, of the many hands that touched them.”Cora learnt from her mother, who came from Gua-temala, 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 envelo-pes, 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 en-velopes, 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 dis-play of aesthetic invitations in the eyes of the be-holders.

Cora lives and works in Munich

Circus, Flight bag, 2011

Photo by: Menika van der Poorten

Bandu Manamperi Bandu Manamperi holds a BFA in Sculpture and is a core member of Colombo’s Theertha Artists’ Collecti-ve. 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 con-temporary 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, inclu-ding “Let’s Take a Walk” and “Ape Gama.” The works of Bandu bring together notions of me-mory, and demonstrate how the effects of external events and doctrines are absorbed into the individual’s being through the body to create memories that be-come inscribed within us.

‘Iron Man’ 2014Created 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 perfor-mances at the Colombo Art Biennale in 2014 - remo-ving 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. Per-forming 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 perfor-mance works are in front of historical colonial buildings as well as contemporary buildings and constructions. The relationship between the past and present, coloni-al 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-preten-ding neat and orderly beauty of the present.The contemporary moment in the Sri Lankan socio-political 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 con-struction 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 representati-on of this sort of abnormal neatness, order and beau-ty 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 de-tention. This risk-taking body and action is seen close-up 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

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 ex-plore 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 com-pleted a video commission for Radar, Loughborough University, as part of their Home/Land series, which was exhibited in Cape Town in July 2013. Other re-cent exhibitions include Entanglement at Rivington Place, International Departure - Gate 10 at Fondazi-one Fotografia and Surfacing at European Commis-son 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 dif-ference 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 iden-tities when our idea of ourselves does not corres-pond 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 photogra-phing, being a part of something but yet simultane-ously trying to make sense of my place within it.”

Nina Mangalanayagam

Born 1980

Untitled (from the series The folds of the fabric fall differently each time), 2008

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, whe-re 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 Con-temporary 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 exhi-bition ‘War and Peace: Visual Narratives from Contem-porary 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 socio-political 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 inva-ded, making us very vulnerable. After the end of the war in Sri Lanka, there was an increased eye on citi-zens. 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 1985Conceal of Marks, 2014

Anoli Perera

Anoli’s work consists of installations, paintings, sculp-ture, 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 the-mes 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 jux-taposed 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 instal-lations.

“My subject matter always comes out of various situ-ations and experiences in the social contexts I live in. Therefore my work reflects an intense social engage-ment. 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 enga-ge 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 un-dertaken between 2012 and 2014 for the exhibition ‘Memory Keeper’,- deliberate on the erasure of per-sonal and public memory. Her current series of works entitled ‘Elevated Utopias’ offers observations of the anxieties of societies in the face of anarchy, globalisa-tion 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 sur-face the politics of the gaze. It also deals with the portrayal of female subjectivity in a particular way. Ca-mera, 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 per-ched 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 po-sitioned 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 am-bience, 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 the-se moments, the present becomes a prisoner of the past. Born 1962

Dinner Table, 2013

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 represen-tation. His works are evocative of the concept of absence and sometimes even suggestive of archeo-logy in the way that he intimately explores and cele-brates the residual.

On first impression his objects remind us of archeo-logical remains or ethnographical objects reminiscent of cabinet curios left behind from the colonial era, as seen in his installation produced for the 2014 Colom-bo 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 natu-ral sensitivity compounded by his time in the orga-nized 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 parti-cularly exemplify this.

Mahen’s works explore the innate mutability of ma-terials 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 me-aning 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 per-ceiver. 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 mo-therland, 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 com-pelling 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 ques-tions 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 inconsis-tencies and problems will be revealed.“ A PereraIn his current work, Pala focusses on Sri Lanka’s current post-war situation and so-called develop-ment 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 yel-low, 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, profit-oriented, highly corrupting and superficial develop-ment that has global connections is seen in his bar-code works.

The mesmorizng visual attraction of his work is ines-capable. 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 expe-rienced today in Sri Lanka; no matter how much you dislike the underlying negativity you cannot escape

consuming the so-called development as well as ex-periencing 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 Kela-niya, graduating with a BFA in painting in 1997. He also received a Diploma in Archeology from the Postgra-duate 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, inclu-ding 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.

‘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 is-sues 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

Wall Plug (16), 2013

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, commen-ting 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 Sin-halese 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 stu-dents and colleagues being an integral part of the sha-ping of his experiences and perceptions.

“Jaffna was ridden by a cruel 30-year war. The post-war 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’, ex-pressed the changing landscapes of Jaffna where he produced the hypnotising, ‘Disappearing and Reap-pearing 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

as if these new infrastructural changes are not whole-heartedly 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’ 2013Pradeep 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 allo-wed 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 aspi-rations. Thalalwattha refers to the potential for further development, with the social political changes of Jaff-na as well as the country.

“City Circle” 2011Thalawatta’s interests in the ever changing landscapes in South Asia developed further during a residency in Bangalore, where Thalawatta created a large installa-tion consisting of thirty curtains assembled in a large

Roadscape, 2012circle in which the public could walk around. These panels represented digital images of the changing face of the city of Bangalore. Pradeep raises questi-ons 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

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 experi-encing at the time. A society marred with large-scale violence , unsympathetic and brutal res-ponses 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 roman-ticised 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 chal-lenging 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 sha-me and inhibitions – their personal experien-ces, 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 trans-formed from the reclusive, spiritually based, se-date, 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 involve-ment 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 conven-tional and established art. During this period one could see progressive artists and individuals co-ming together to support the newly-emerging radicalism in art by establishing alternate art spaces and group efforts. Some of them beca-me 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 Approa-ches’ 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 Lan-kan 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 estab-lished 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. Interna-tional 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 Founda-tion established the idea of international art exchanges through a series of international workshops called ‘Art Link,’ which were re-gularly held from 1999 for a number of years. International art workshops became a regu-lar event in the Colombo art scene during the decade of 2000 which generated considera-ble enthusiasm for international art exchan-ges. Such international art exchanges and networking beyond Sri Lanka was pursued intensely by the art initiative Theertha Inter-national Artists’ Collective established in 2000 by a progressive group of artists. Theertha, through its regular art residencies and work-shops supported by the South Asia Network of Artists (SANA), a regional art network es-tablished in collaboration with artists’ groups in India (Khoj International), Nepal (Sutra), Ban-gladesh (Britto Art Trust) and Pakistan(Vasl) have managed to work intensely to connect with regional and international art commu-nities. In many ways, artists’ mobility within South Asia and beyond supported by SANA and others became one of the main con-duits 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 con-tinued for so long which paralyzed as well as brutalized the entire society. This was a major situational change that allowed artists to con-nect and work together much easily with the North and North East which was relatively in-accessible 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 socie-tal violence, a thematic he has engaged with since his 1994 show, ‘Anxiety’ that essentially provided the parameters for ‘90s art. Similar att-empts 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 Krishan-tha (‘Chairs’, 2007), Bandu Manamperi (‘Numbed’, 2009), Sanath Kalubadana (‘My Friend the Sol-dier’, 2007) and Pala Pothupitiya (‘My Ancestral Dress and My ID’, 2008).

In 2009, the same year the armed conflict en-ded 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 Colom-bo 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 immedi-ately 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,- inter-pret 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 in-dividuals 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 pu-blic 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 wri-ters, memory keepers, interpreters and com-mentators of history, society and culture often collate their visions, hallucinations and interpretations of ‘truths’ about life, mythici-zing 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 his-tory and memory and often their interven-tions and engagements with historicity and remembrance have brought out narratives of resistance, voices of disquiet and forebo-ding 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 histo-ry lose its linearity of progression. Allegory and metaphors in their aesthetic exercises add layers to the already subjective memo-ries and selective histories framed via multi-ple interpretations. Artists become memory keepers, narrators and documenters of an interpretive history ciphered through an aes-thetic and conceptual veneer to be read and reread as art.

-Anoli Perera-

Asian Art Newspaper

Reginald Aloysius

British Council

sarah Callaghan

Carlton Club

Colombo Art Biennale

Alexi Cory-smith

D&D London

Pradeep Dularaj

Echo House Printers

Liz Fernando

Anna Flick

shevanthie Goonesekra

Kingsley Gunatillake

Manoj Gunewardena

Desmond Gunewardena

Eduard Hempel

Hempel Galleries

John Hollingsworth

Daniel Hutton

Laura Hutton

Vimukthi Jayasundera

Ursula Keith

Janananda Laksiri

Cora de Lang

Jill Macdonald

Bandu Manamperi

Lalith Manage

Nina Mangalanayagam

Dhanushka Marasinghe

Annabelle Muazu

Joy Onyejiako

Jasmin Pelham

Pelham Communications

Anoli Perera

Mahen Perera

Joe Pinto

Elizabetta Pisu

Pala Pothupitiye

Koralegedara Pushpakumara

Niru Ratnam

Rockland Ceylon Arrack

Hasita senanayake

sophie simpson

sOAs Unsiversity of London

sriLankan Airlines

Genevieve sorrell

Puja srivastava

Pradeep Thalawatta

Fru Tholstrup

Monica Vinader

Acknowledgements

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.

WWW.CEYLONARRACK.COM

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NATIONAL GALLERY, SINGAPOREDBS 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.

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 SHANGHAIThe 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.

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N e w G a l l e r yN e w A d d r e s s

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 state-of-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

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

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.

Qanun, Fi’l-Tibb, (Canon of Medicine), volume 5, Ibn Sina (980-1037),Iran or Iraq, 1052, opaque watercolour and ink on paperFolio: 21.2 x 16.4 cm, from the permanent collection

ASIAN ARTAga Khan Museum

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ASIAN ARTAga Khan Museum

Opens in Toronto

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