Drawings, Animations, and Tapestries by Tilak Samarawickrema

Gallery Ragini is proud to present "Not Just a Doodle", a landmark exhibition that brings together for the first time in India the intricate and multidisciplinary oeuvre of Sri Lankan artist and designer Tilak Samarawickrema.

- INA PURI

Gallery Ragini is proud to present "Not Just a Doodle", a landmark exhibition that brings together for the first time in India the intricate and multidisciplinary oeuvre of Sri Lankan artist and designer Tilak Samarawickrema. Curated by the distinguished writer and cultural archivist Ina Puri, the exhibition showcases Samarawickrema's prolific five-decade journey across mediums - drawing, etching, animation, and hand-woven textile - revealing the deeply personal and philosophical core of his artistic practice.

Though trained as an architect at the University of Melbourne and deeply influenced by the design vision of Geoffrey Bawa, Samarawickrema's practice has never been confined by disciplinary boundaries. Instead, it radiates outward - intertwining the sacred and the sensual, the folk and the modern, the ritual and the dreamlike - into a language that is unmistakably his own. As the exhibition's title playfully suggests, these are "not just doodles" but the result of decades of meditation through mark-making, storytelling, and collaboration.

At the heart of the exhibition are Samarawickrema's drawings and etchings, many of which date back to his early years in Milan in the 1970s, where he was first introduced to the European avant-garde. These works are intimate, gestural, and psychologically charged - archetypal forms emerge from seemingly spontaneous lines. Some figures appear genderless, others divine, erotic, playful, or wounded. There is both restraint and abandon in his strokes.