Sri Lankan artists look beyond war

16 years on, the civil war continues to influence art from Sri Lanka even as artists muse on memory, ecology and joy

- Avantika Bhuyan

At Experimenter, Colaba, Charred Hyphal Mat hangs suspended from the ceiling. The patterns formed by the interweaving of jute and coir ropes and fishing net lend this work a certain fragility and porosity.

Inspired by hyphae, or threadlike structures that form mycelial networks in the ground, this installation carries forth Sri Lankan artist Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah’s exploration of “organic communication and regeneration within forest environments”. Beit his installations or works on paper such as Blooded Flowerscape, the artist repeatedly foregrounds black as the hue of choice, with pops of colour at times, to create a portrait of wounded ecologies witnessed during the three decades of civil war in Sri Lanka. The ongoing show, No Race, No Colour, features such new and commissioned works conceived by the artist over the past four years to tell stories of conflict and interdependence through the lens of living ecologies.

Meanwhile, at the ongoing Art Mumbai fair at Mahalaxmi Racecourse, another artist is showing the fraught past of Sri Lanka through a different medium. The softness of fabric serves as a background for some tough realities as Hema Shironi presents a landscape of conflict. “In the tactility of the green mesh, often used in construction to shield the promise of a new beginning, she frames an image of a cookie-cutter house ‘presented’ to families for the home that was taken away—an attempt at reconciliation in the aftermath of war,” states Radhika Hettiarachchi in a curatorial essay. These works were earlier showcased in September in Delhi as part of the twin exhibitions from the island nation, Homes Wrapped in Cloth, Borders Raised in Flags and After Aphantasias by Shrine Empire.