Art, War and Politics in Sri Lanka: An interview with Jagath Weerasinghe
Jagath Weerasinghe is one of Sri Lanka best known and most influential artists (see bio here). He was commissioned by the Sri Lankan government to design the monument ‘Shrine for the Innocent’ as a remembrance for the innocent victims of the ruthless violence that the southern part of the country experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was completed in 1999.
Jagath and I talked about art and politics, how for example the experience of witnessing the Tamil pogrom in July 1983 and being abducted in the late 70′s shaped his political consciousness and in turn influenced his creative output. We also talked about Sri Lankan art more generally – about new painters, the potential for art in post-war Sri Lanka and the Colombo Art Biennale, slated to be held later this year.
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I am glad that there are people who think like me. I like his his idea about Imagining peace…
Yes, we would wait for the day when we would eat kirith together with all communities with their own will and not an government staged drama.
Imagining Peace
Imagining Art
Designing Art
Making Art
Imagining Peace
Designing Peace
Negotiating Peace
Imagining Citizen
Designing Citizen
Art+Peace=Citizen
Jagath
Imagines Peace
Mixes History and Concepts
Moulds Citizens
Sanjana
Imagines Peace
Brings Trowel to Jagath
Moulds Citizens
Citizens
Imagine Peace
Make new History and
Kiribath
Punithem dear,
Please do not assault us poor folk with your bad poetry. Instead of posting the same predictable gibberish, try to amaze us with creative and better thought out ideas. In case you happen to be young, my advice for people like you is that you learn to go beyond custom. The rhetoric you have relied on for so long will not take you that far in life. You and a few other fellows have been yapping away about the sinhala buddhist thing for so long…it is frankly starting to get very boring.
I am an old woman, but I will speak as a youngster today and tell you: “get a life pal” .
Athiest dear
1. I’m also an old woman – only lived through the sixty-year destruction of the socio-economic-environmental fabric of Northeast and feel very guilty for having not continued satyagraha through 60s and 70s and ….
2. I’m guilty of having not taken our story to the remote villages in the South much earlier …. It may not be too late but then the Tamil diaspora will not get past the Katunayake airport under the present circumstances …..
I’m dying to do art therapy, play therapy …. for the children in the camps only if I’m allowed to get there.
3.I’ve never written poetry in my life except for the gibberish ”pieces of desperation, desolation and dejection” in the last few weeks in the pages of GROUNDVIEWS.
The vicious conflict
Only gets more vicious.
The victims
Only get more victimised.
Third party arbitration
Only way out of annihilation.
Punithem dear,
For an old woman, your poetry is very immature; hence, the reason for me to believe you are young.
Perhaps you thought I was simply kidding when I called myself an “old woman” because you could’nt believe that an “old woman” – or, may I say a senior citizen – could be an atheist.
At this age, I have ample time to serf the internet because I am retired.
If you really are an old person, please give up this hate, and write something constructive without harping on the past like a lonely, deluded person. We should not behave like kids in our precious golden years.
Dear Atheist
1.”desperation, desolation and dejection” wouldn’t show maturity – they’ll show most probably all forms of regression.
2.I don’t presume that anybody(of any age) is kidding – I take words seriously
3. I never had any hate(NOT EVEN NOW) but only anger at why the South cannot understand the plight of the Tamils over six decades – if hate shows through anything I’ve written so far I’d like to withdraw – I’ve only been believing that only my anger has been coming through
4. I beg the South to read at least the UTHR reports – UTHR has been criticising
the government and the LTTE equally. May I point out the last of their reports:
http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/spreport32.htm#_Toc232409723 :
”………………………..
Discrimination in Action: No sooner the President abolished the term minority, some old discriminatory habits which caused the Tamils to rebel show signs of returning with a vengeance. ‘Sinhalese’ fishermen have been brought under naval protection to fish in the sea off Mannar Island without any restriction. The local Tamil and Muslim fishermen are allowed only about four days a week on the pretext of security for some minor naval movements. The trawlers with Sinhalese fishermen use large Japanese nets of a kind now banned internationally, which drag the seabed, pulling out coral, the nets of local fishermen and damaging the breeding ground, eggs, weeds and fish fodder.
On 28th May the Tamil fishermen protested and had an argument with a group of Sinhalese trawler fishermen, who using the communication set the Navy provided, informed them of the boat number. When the Tamil fishermen came ashore, naval men who were waiting for them with batons, made the Tamils kneel and beat them up severely.
At this time when the official narrative dismisses the insurgency as one of Tamil terrorism backed up by international conspiracies, we must re-emphasise that the Tamil rebellion was the result of the leering loutishness of a Sinhalese dominated State that tried to deal with the minorities by the use of feudal thuggery (best exemplified by repeated outbreaks of communal violence) and persistent deprivation and humiliation. Over decades, none of that has been effectively redressed.
There is always hope amidst despair. Ordinary Sinhalese people from all walks of life felt the pain of Tamil civilians caught up in the conflict. Even from the border villages, Sinhalese who suffered grievous violence over many years have donated whatever they could lay their hands on for collections for the relief of Tamil IDPs. Even many middle class Sinhalese feel that time has come for reconciliation and initiatives to give new life to the country. They look to a broader political settlement that gives dignity to the minorities. Instead of building on this potential, the leaders are again failing the country through their preoccupation with a witch hunt and entrenching abuse of authority, while further subverting accountability.
……………………….”
WORDS alone aren’t enough – they hide continuing discrimination.
DEEDS are needed to ward off HHAATTEE.
Punitham, point taken.
Sinhalese brethren
Please don’t delay change of heart to make changes in bureaucratic discrimination (which is in effect leadership thinking which is in turn voting populace).
Delaying this doesn’t cost us anything but costs a lot on the other side and delays reconciliation or even makes it impossible.
First steps first please.
Sanjana
You could have included a few shots of Jagath’s sculpture in the video.
While artists are doing their bit, how about the environmentalists doing their bit of dealing with the banned fishing nets?
Environmentalists
Please please please
Please look at the vast area of forest cleared to erect the tents of camps for recent IDPs.
This extremely vicious conflict can be brought to an end only through looking at human rights of all aspects.
needed (They didn’t leave patches of trees in between tin tents for people to take respite from the hot sun).
Where are the Environment Impact Assessment(EIA) of anything we do in this era of human existence?
If we couldn’t get into our heads the political/social/economic/cultural aspects for human survival, it should be much easier to see the environmental aspect needed for our survival.
People from all around the world went to Kyoto, Kyoto Protocol, … ….
They don’t reach people of Kilinochchi and Kiliveddi and Kandavalai ????
Dear UNA of Sri Lanka,
The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment declared that “man’s environment, the natural and the man-made, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of basic human rights–even the right to life itself.”