The Art of Anoli Perera : Recent Works at the Barefoot Gallery Colombo, 12th to 26th May 2001

The last 10 years have been very productive years for Sri Lankan art.  Many promising young artist have emerged and are continuing to keep the Sri Lankan art scene vibrant and active by introducing new trends in art. One major issue that dominated intellectual discourse and creative activity, may it be arts or literature, are the feminist issues.  However, manifestations of feminist thinking in painting and other visual arts far outweigh that seen in any other creative activity. Unfortunately, very little has been written on this impressive body of work done by various artists.

Anoli Perera could be identified as one of the most important contemporary feminist artists in Sri Lanka. She has exhibited her ability to blend content and form in various ways to bring out maximum effect in her works. Her art practice extends from painting, sculpture, and installations to mixed media work. Her most recent exhibition opened at the 'Barefoot Gallery' on the 12th of May titled 'In the Entangled web' and will continue until 26th May. This exhibition shows some of her most recent mixed media works and some paintings.

Most works at Anoli's recent exhibition defy definition. However, these could be loosely called mixed media works. These works are made out of carefully selected objects, namely pieces of Chinese vases, lace work, photographs and pieces of material interspersed with decorative drawings, colors and hand made three dimensional figures. Theses are sculptural works of installational ideas.

My first encounter with Anoli's paintings was at the  'Young Contemporaries' exhibition of 1991 organized by the George Kyte Foundation. She entered the Sri Lankan art scene via this exhibition with somewhat imitational work, which found appreciation from some art enthusiasts. However, her initial paintings did not impress me as did her later works. In her later solo exhibition she had moved well away from imitative tendencies and had started to indulge in much personal and authentic abstract work.  At this stage of her career as an artist, she used a limited palate with the domination of black and brown with diverse subject matter. This period may have been a sole searching phase in her career.

This early phase was followed by a series of intense work on feminist issue. Though verbally Anoli is not an out spoken feminist activist, her art pictorially espouses many feminist issues.  But clearly, she is more an artist than an activist. She does not paint for the sake of intellectual inclination, but rather her artwork act as agents of her intellectual discourse. Anoli often uses scripts in her paintings in order to visualize issues generally articulated verbally. She has addressed diverse issues in her works, which have been identified as important issues by feminists in other parts of the world, some of which however have not yet surfaced even in literary texts in Sri Lanka. The experiences of being a woman in a somewhat conventional society have spilled over into Anoli's work, both consciously and unconsciously. Regardless of medium and mode of art production, Anoli's art essentially echoes the feminist expressions of a middle class woman. It questions natural assumptions of patriarchy and male dominance as well as female subordination in our society.

Anoli's art is free from conventional representations and rigid notions of aesthetics. She adopts diverse types of art practices to express herself which is one aspect that adds strength to her art. Though her main mode of art production is painting, her installations and mixed media works are more powerful and show very clear postmodern tendencies. Her earlier pieces of mixed media work using windows and car doors though not very original ideas, did point to a tendency towards intellectually and artistically original mixed media work which has culminated in the works at the present exhibition. These could be regarded as her most mature mixed media works with regard to originality in form and content.

The theme of Anoli's recent exhibition, 'In the Entangled Web' is about the relationships and living environs that are created by middle class women to find meaning for their entangled existence and to perpetuate a structure that would ensure their right of place as a key players in the running of the house and in maintaining good relationships. Having chosen the theme, she has skillfully woven the pieces of 'domestic accessories ' which mark the role of woman as the beautifier of the home in her works. Simple decorative motives often found in Chinese vases adorn most of her recent works along with pieces of Chinese vase, needle work and lace material.  The message in these works is simple and straight forward, but the methods used are novel and innovative.  In essence, these works are used to deconstruct the ideology of 'womanhood' in contemporary middle class society, and has been formulated by literally deconstructed materials and decorative elements found in a " decorated environment" constructed by women.

The use of common decorative motifs and decorative material juxtaposed with complicated issues of 'womanhood' in contemporary society makes Anoli's art an exemplary portrayal of feminist issues in creative activity in Sri Lanka in recent times. Commonness of the decorative elements and the use of found objects using an innovative approach make these works stand out as postmodern art.

The significance of using simple repetitive decorative elements like flowers, leaves and other patterns can be read in different ways. The essence of repetitiveness lies in being predictable, conforming, non-innovative and non-challenging.  This is also what is expected of a middle class woman. By being agents of creating an environment with repetitive elements, women are indirectly conditioned to adopt the characteristics of their environment – by becoming entangled in the web they create!