If I tell you Sri Lanka’s contemporary art scene is pulsating with ideas and experiment, you won’t believe me. Why? Well….because the country has been in war for two and a half decades. Basic amenities are the need of the hour, leave alone a luxury item like art! But artists have been a daring voice of truth, an area where even the local journalists have dreaded to tread. “It’s evident even today that it’s only the artists’ community which is questioning the current government on the way the Tamil refugees are being handled after the war. I realised this in the recently held Colombo Biennale in August”, says Mirak Rahim who works for the govt supported relief operations group, CPA Lanka.
Listening to this, I was glad I had the chance to meet some of the best contemporary names of the Sri Lankan art world. And this was made possible by a Chennai based art collector’s group called Art East. Founded in 2006, Art East has its eyes set on art from the East—be it China, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines or even Vietnam. “We have collected 300 works so far and we really don’t care about big names, we just buy what we like. We plan to start an art fund in the years to come but before that we want to set up an all India restoration laboratory: a service which is not available to most art buyers,” says K Saravanan, CEO, Art East.
They organised their first artists’ camp in November this year, taking 5 Indian artists to Colombo to meet 3 artists of the host country. “From all the Asian countries we collect art works from, Sri Lanka seemed most topical to explore as a camp site after the end of the war. I realised a lot of Indian artists have been eager to visit the place but the constant threat of terror is what kept them away.” Mumbai-based Prabhakar Kolte also admitted to agreeing to come for this art camp after having refused many others in the past because of the LTTE war.
The management of Jetwing Vil Uyana, a hotel which epitomizes the perfect combination of luxury in the lap of nature, threw open its doors for these eight artists to offer them the best of Sri Lankan hospitality – from the cuisine to the architecture and the ambience. It is located close to the ancient rock monument of the Sigiriya (a corruption of Simha-giri or ‘Lion Mountain’) city. It has the quaint luck of having been both a pleasure palace and a monastery. Its magnificent gardens, cave frescoes and precariously-situated palace were built during the reign of Kasyapa (AD 477 – 495), a usurper king who it seems was neither liked by his people nor later historians. However, what Kasyapa has left behind is truly priceless: Frescoes of apsaras and a uniquely-cut natural rock that is now protected as a World Heritage site by the UNESCO.
The camp itinerary also included an elephant safari at one of the two national parks near Sigiriya. Sri Lanka by the way is the only place in Asia where you can spot the largest herds of the Asian elephant. “I get lost in the colours of Sri Lanka, which unlike the colours back home are so spare and unmixed. There’s also this zen-like peace in the air, which, honestly, I didn’t expect. But coming here has also made me realise how similar we are as a people… all the more reason why we should be a borderless region… say like one Southeast Asian Union,” said Dhiraj Singh, a participating artist from Delhi. And he was not alone in thinking along those lines. Kolkata’s Subrota Gangopadhyay too felt strongly about the need to dissolve borders. “What has largely been an isolated island so far,” said he, “Sri Lanka needs to open up to the world just as much as India needs to reach out to people here.”
Jagath Ravindra and Anoma Wijewardene from Sri Lanka prefer to call themselves abstract expressionists, something that the Lankan art scene is not used to as a figurative hangover still persists. Jagath’s colours are strong and vibrant and his works at the camp were inspired by the hues of Sigiriya’s cave paintings. Anoma, who also does mix-media installations, focused on spirituality in her war ravaged country. “I have used the Pali script in my works. It’s about stepping into the divine light. But two separate canvases depict two different paths to enlightenment, that’s why the second one has a dark patch.”
Shyam Kanu Borthakur from Assam is not just an artist but an activist too. And for him the camp became bridge across to the island. “I think spending time with artists from the host country offered me a new perspective. It’s much better than exploring the place like a tourist. It’s the job of the artist to create a vision. And through this camp, we hope to create a vision for stronger Indo-Lankan ties.”
Satisfied with the effort made by Art East to kickstart the process of Indo-Lankan cross cultural programmes, artist Sanjeewa Kumar hopes to see a similar bonhomie within his own country too. “It’s too early to comment on the opportunities after the fall of the LTTE, but for me the Tamil struggle isn’t over yet. Their rehabilitation still hasn’t happened. The true mark of success will be the cultural and social mixing between Tamils and Sinhalese.” Sanjeewa likes to reinterpret history in his works. At the camp, he went way back into prehistory juxtaposing the ancient rock of Sigiriya with the woolly mammoth, perhaps hinting at co-existence and the hope of finding reconciliation in his own country.
While Saravanan and his team are already planning their next art camp in another Asian hotspot next year, the artists have returned home with one question on their minds. If India and Sri Lanka have always shared strong military ties, why has progress been so slow in people-to-people initiatives? Unlike Pakistan, which is so often seen as the enemy country, India and Sri Lanka have officially always had cordial relations. So what’s stopping Indians and Sri Lankans from forging stronger cultural ties with each other?
Sahar Zaman is currently working for CNN-IBN as a senior arts correspondent and news anchor. She is based in Delhi. |
