Sarath Kumarasiri's Exhibition

'Temples Shrines'

The Third exhibition of
the "Theertha Pradarshana Wasanthaya" 2009 at Red Dot Gallery
will be open on SATURDAY, 12th December 2009 at 6.30 pm.
The exhibition will remain open till 4th January 2010.
Gallery Hours: Monday to Wednesday 10.30 AM - 5.00 PM Sundays 11.00 AM - 4.30 PM.
Closed on all public and mercantile holidays.

Art of Sarath Kumarasiri

Sri Lankan modern art upgraded its status to “contemporary art” in terms of its art practice through the beliefs and critically engaging process of the 90’s Trend. That is, by believing that raw material, symbolic figures or other situations used for constructing art can only remain within the art, solely with the understanding that they exist with their conceptual meanings intact. An early follower of the 90’s Trend,  Sarath Kumarasiri embodies the afore mentioned criticality of contemporary art in most of his work. In other words, when engaging in a cursory look at his work one could see that he has removed his art from the parameters and definitions of modernism, thereby questioning its ideologies through placing his works on the lineages of handicraft and local traditions. That is, his art making privileges the ideas of unique dexterity, certain prior training and the use of elements from a particular history of material  usage. In his earlier visual presentations, Sarath Kumarasiri reminiscence with contemporary criticality, the  existence of a single individual who is bewildered or frustrated in the face of mechanisms of organized political crimes, or unbearable situations that arose from those (see image 1, Trouser).

There is a very close art historical connection between Sarath Kumarasiri’s history of material usage and the Kovil-Pansal works that he is presenting at the Theertha Red Dot Gallery in this current exhibition. From his works seen in “No Glory” exhibition (1998) to the present, all his artworks shows a tendency of  using imagery that are naturalistic or has a photographic likeliness  (see image 2, Shoe and Image 3, Hiroshima Bicycle). The objects or forms that he constructs as artworks are made very close in appearance to the objects in real life. It is also possible to identify a certain archeological or archaic form in the ‘Kovil-Pansal’ exhibits similar to his earlier works.  In addition, his initial work depicted elements that reflected a very private and innocent aspects of day to day human existence. Deviating from this aspect, in the current exhibition we could see that he has used common but large and monumental objects. What does it means to make something monumental? This can be understood as an attempt of highlighting an outstanding political ideal or a construction with an especial historical significance. In that sense, it can be postulated that these works of Sarath articulate ideas on the religio- political and ethno-chauvinistic behavior. The constructions of such large works are informed by Sarath Kumarasiri’s own history of art making. One such example is his work done in KHOJ residency 2008 titled Stratification (see image 4). On the other hand, behind the construction of Sarath Kumarasiri’s Kovil-Pansal there are implications about a tragic situation of a common socio- cultural and political reality referencing a very clear realization: that is the realization  that the presence of extremist religious nationalism behind many dark episodes in the recent Sri Lankan history as a fact. In his current approach too one could trace the presence of the contemporary Sri Lankan art history’s early  tendencies. An excellent example for this is Jagath Weerasinghe’s 1992 work tilted “Crumbling of Stupa” (see image 5).

Through Sarath Kumarasiri’s “Kovil-Pansal” exhibition, he memorializes the tragedy present in the imagined nationalism of a nation associated with ethno-religious and chauvinistic behavior in a particular passing   cultural -political moment or in its recent past. It suggests that notion of ‘ethnic self’ that gets constructed historically, molded according to the ultimate aspirations of racial politics, will be destroyed within by its own internal dynamics through the extreme political behavior connected with racial, nationalistic or religious behavior (see image 6 &7). Said in other words, religiosity or heritage connected to a certain population is destroyed by racial political objectives. By this Sarath suggests that the religious spaces are subjected to a common tragedy even though they differ from each other in terms  of internal organization of their religious spaces, identities, believes and their iconographic narrations or practices. This specific suggestion visually implied by Sarath in “Kovil-Pansal” is made complicated by incorporating similar critical suggestions by other artists and visual images that he himself has chosen. By  including visual constructions by others that are conceptually similar to his, Sarath presents a multiple reading in his work “Kovil-Pansal”.

The naming “Kovil-Pansal” also highlights the skilful subtleties of the State’s behavior. In the title “Kovil-Pansal” two separate words has amalgamated into one word, which has similar meanings. In this new word, there is no sense of the historical depth of the two separate words. It could be suggested by this Sarath Kumarasiri is expressing that the concepts of equality are becoming mere linguistic play with the  State’s involvement that builds racial or religious nationalism as a political gimmick. Sarath Kumarasiri also connotes that in a particular society, the extreme behaviors of the racial and religious nationalistic tendencies results in the destruction of primary sign systems connected with its basic existence.

Prasanna Ranabahu
10 December 2009

Translated by Lalith Manage