There have been several little rivulets of enterprise seeking to further amity an mutual understanding among the four major ethnic communities residing in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lanka Unites movement and the Trails Charity Walk organised by Sarinda Unamboowe and aides in 2015/16 are good examples. So too the Murali Cup and the work of the Foundation of Goodness. They have now been joined by a tiny band of Sri Lankan artists from the Tamil and Sinhalese communities seeking to transcend the island’s diversity via ethnographic visits meant also to stimulate aesthetic products embodying these exchanges: amity and respect in art-form. Abstract art is alien to my capacities and temperament; but I am certain that it is a medium of echange which can encorage amity and respect for difference. So I trust corporations and foundations will delve into their philanthropic pockets to encoruage this line of cross0-cultural reconciliation. We need such efforts so very badly. There are thickets of forest and loads of swamps in this scoiety and amongst migrant Sri Lankans devoted to concoction and fabrication, hadr-nosed chauvinism and ideological rigidity, Michael Roberts as Editor, Thuppahi
ONE. T. Shanaathanan: C/A/M/P – An alternative method of learning
In comparison with many art initiatives in the recent past such as artist residencies, workshops and curated exhibitions, the CAMP project conceived and organized by Vibhavi Academy was unique in many ways. Where other initiatives have focused on practice this project was fore-grounded dialogue and studio conversation. Choosing artists from many diverse backgrounds who lived in many different parts of the country as opposed to Colombo made this conversation into a kind of field meeting amongst artists. The findings of the project provide crucial insights into thinking of alternative methods of knowledge production and understanding the situations faced by different communities of artists in the context of the post war Sri Lanka. A field meeting of this kind allowed artists who would not otherwise meet, to spend time in each other’s company on their own terms, over a sustained period of time. The almost ethnographic nature of the artist’s travelling around and being strangers in their own country, seeing, tasting and hearing things that were foreign introduced the idea of ‘field-work’ to a fine art community. The contrasting nature of how all the artist’s lived and worked along with their backgrounds to becoming artists underlined the fact that while Fine Art learning can be structured by a syllabus learning to be an artist required thinking from outside the so called syllabus. Continue reading →
Chelvanayakam campaigning 
Bandaranaike on the SLFP Sinhala Only ‘road train’
