GotaGoGama: A Learning Curve
GotaGoGama is gone. Gota has returned. Things have regressed in the past five months or so. The nucleus of Sri Lanka’s popular protests have ceased to exist. Its last days were a…
Culture
Performance Art and Political Protest
Performance art is an offshoot of visual arts where the artist uses his or her body as a medium of communication. Performance art has always been interconnected with society and politics. Artists…
Women in the Estate Sector Face Many Layers of Discrimination
Maatram Women played a significant part in the growth and stability of the plantation economy throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Women were brought along with men by the British…
Chandraguptha Thenuwara’s New Exhibition: Ecce Homo
The moment we live in is dire. It is a moment that has propelled citizens to fearlessly come forward to fight for sustainable and transformative solutions to systemic socio-political ills that have…
Dissent Art Comes Into its Own
There is a lot of blood; faces grotesquely distorted, hands dripping red, bared fangs and dismembered body parts. Disgraceful alliances are mocked, leaders are lampooned and ridiculed and suffering and repression are…
Chandraguptha Thenuwara’s Covert at Venice Biennale
Welcome to this conversation with one of Sri Lanka’s most renowned artists, Chandraguptha Thenuwara. I don’t think those who are listening need an introduction so I will go straight into ? It…
We want the Power of Equality, Justice and Love. Not Love for Power.
In late April, women from movements and collectives in the North and East marched into GotaGoGama in Galle Face to voice their concerns and issues in solidarity with the struggle in the…
Popular Struggles and Education
Following the token general strike last week against the backdrop of the ongoing protests to oust President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s authoritarian regime, a few school principals have been grumbling about students being deprived of…
Refusing a Neoliberal Peace in The Incomplete Thombu
Today Sri Lanka faces its worst economic crisis since independence. In the coming months, people’s hardships will only worsen as more austerity is forced on them. The present crisis is a result…
The Caged Birds Of Paradise
Being a woman in Sri Lanka in 2022 is a challenging experience. Gender in a patriarchal society whose hetero normative values are entrenched is intensely complicated by the complex fragility of South…
Capturing the Disappearing Glory of Slave Island
As elegant old buildings and diverse neighbourhoods disappear before our eyes, sacrificed on the altar of development, a group of people came together in 2018 to initiate the We Are From Here…
Atrocities of the Civil War Through the Eyes of Artists
A common theme running through this year’s Colomboscope, entitled Language is Migrant, is the enduring consequences of Sri Lanka’s civil war as seen through the eyes of several young artists based in…
Layla Gonaduwa: Exploring Memory, Home and Migration Through Art
For three months Layla Gonaduwa, a self taught, interdisciplinary artist, travelled around Sri Lanka to explore the concept of memory, home and migration. She explored symbiotic and discordant relationships between within communities…
Healing Trauma Through Art: A Personal Journey
When Ajantha Ranaweera was ten years old, his brother who was in the army went missing in action. Several years later, he was declared dead. There were no remains. On that day in…
The Great Divide
There are photographs being shared on social media of charitable visits that are being made to elders’ homes. Some of the visitors are not wearing masks, an omission constituting criminal negligence during…
