/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE: Sri Lanka Looks at War Through Art

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beverly Andrews

LONDON, Apr 22 2003 (IPS) - Political and military conflict can often be a fertile ground for artistic creativity. Art can serve as an important outlet for those who find themselves caught in the middle of warring factions. It can also be a useful propaganda tool for rival factions.

But once the guns are silent and the peace treaty has been signed how do these artists then respond?

London’s October Gallery is currently hosting an exhibition titled ‘Serendipity’. This powerful exhibition takes a look at the work of artists from Sri Lanka, a year on from the end of that country’s brutal civil war. The exhibition highlights how artists both view Sri Lanka’s past and its precarious present.

Serendipity presents the work of many of Sri Lanka’s most celebrated artists and includes installations, paintings, poetry and sculpture.

The range of the work exhibited is breathtaking and appears to draw on both the country’s religious past as well as seeking to reflect its embrace of modernism, which took place in the twentieth century. The art exhibited also shows the trauma of its bitter two-decade-old war, which claimed the lives of over 64,000 people and displaced thousands.

”We wanted to put together a show that reflected the widest range possible of artists in the country,” says Polly Savage, the show’s curator. ”A show which also introduces to Europe contemporary art from Sri Lanka."

‘Serendipity’ is the first exhibition of contemporary Sri Lankan art ever to be held in London. It introduces the work of such acclaimed artists as Tissa Ranasingh, Padeep Chandrasiri and Malathiade Silva.

Tissa Ranasingh, who attended the opening, says, "I think for many of us we see this as a welcome opportunity to exhibit our work to a much wider audience."

Ranasingh who despite a sprightly, youthful appearance has sculpted for over 50 years, draws heavily in his work on the religious mythology of both Hindus and Buddhists. He says, "As a child I was fascinated by these stories they always seemed so real to me. To the point when I became an artist I wanted to recreate them."

It’s easy to see this enchantment with myth in Ranasingh’s work his playful bronze pieces seemed like extracts from epic tales, like the work entitled ‘Eagle’, man and rider which captures a bird with a man seated on its back at the point of flight. Another of Ranasingh’s pieces shows the bronze toe of a god, so great a figure that you dare only see a part of him.

When asked how he would like those who see his work to respond, Ranasingh says with a twinkle in his eye: "I would like them first to see in my work whatever it is which is important to them and then I would like them to pull out their checkbooks and buy it."

Elsewhere in the exhibition is Dominic Sansoni’s haunting representation of the Hindu god Ganesh, an image which is presented like a mantra, repeated several times with an almost hypnotic effect the more you see it, the more its reflection changes.

Sri Lanka was once considered the cultural gateway between the East and West. This ancient kingdom was often mentioned in the historical writings of the Greek geographer Ptolemy or Claudes Ptolomeus who gives us an account of what life was like at this pivotal time in history.

The beginnings of Sri Lankan art can be traced back to the second year BC. Where the earliest recorded piece is that of a drawing of a palace on a piece of cloth. With the advent of Buddhism, the work of the country’s artists changed and both its cultural and religious traditions became fused together.

In more recent times, Sri Lankan artists have tried to both embrace modernity without abandoning the country’s traditional heritage. When looking at the work of contemporary artists there one can still see a yearning for both modernity and tradition.

But perhaps no other event has affected the country in such a traumatic way has its brutal civil war. A civil war started in 1983 and seen by most as a consequence of its colonial past when its then British rulers sought to divide the country along racial lines.

These divisions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese continued long after independence and ultimately triggered the country’s violent civil war. Despite the fact that the war is now technically over, this untold trauma has left thousands with emotional scars that it will probably take more than a generation to heal.

Mohan Daniel, a leading authority on Sri Lankan art who has worked tirelessly in Sri Lanka to promote these artists, states: "The war caused a great trauma to all of us and I think for many there now we want to forget much of the horror that took place. We want to move on to the future".

This desire to try to forget the past can be seen in the absence of images depicting the war. The majority of artists here have chosen to look either at the country’s religious heritage or its myths and history.

The one exception is perhaps not surprisingly the only Tamil artist featured, T Shanaathanan. His haunting etchings present an unflinching view of the horrors of war, such as ‘Day Under Siege’, which depicts a headless corpse with an emaciated dog howling at the moon.

But perhaps the most devastating representation of the horrors of war is Shanaathanan’s ‘Jafthna’, an etching which depicts dead bodies strewn along the steps of what looks to be a government building, in the distance a clock floats in sky which is broken.

Shanaathanan’s etchings do not depict political agendas or do they celebrate the victor and bemoan the plight of the vanquished. But what they do is simply to suggest that in war there are no winners.

‘Serendipity’ is a timely exhibition. The work exhibited by these talented artists show a society slowly moving out of the shadow of war and groping toward an uncertain future.

Perhaps the most striking piece is Malathi de Silva’s ‘Buddha’, a beautiful marble depiction of that most peaceful religious leader. The head is perhaps how Sri Lanka would now like to see itself, serene and calm with just a faint aurora of hope surrounding it.