糖心Vlog

In July 2022, an unprecedented protest movement against corruption, immiseration, and impunity swept Sri Lanka and forced the President to flee the country. While the protest movement called itself 鈥渢he Struggle鈥� (Aragalaya and Porattam in Sinhala and Tamil), it was, more accurately, a volatile mix of multiple struggles by disparate groups 鈥� from Tamil families of the disappeared to Sinhalese army veterans, from paddy farmers to the urban middle class, from Muslim women to trans people.

One year on, a  and a  commemorate and contextualize these different struggles at a time of renewed austerity and repression. The exhibitions explore how the visual arts helped promote 鈥� and now help sustain 鈥� a more hopeful, pluralistic, and just politics for Sri Lanka. They do so by bringing together several Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim artists whose work tackles key ongoing struggles 鈥� for accountability, economic justice, religious understanding, and women鈥檚 rights. The exhibitions aim to raise greater awareness about Sri Lanka鈥檚 crises and struggles, as well as to highlight the important role played by contemporary artists.

Both exhibitions feature recent work by the artist , who set up the GotaGoGama Art Gallery at the largest protest site in Colombo. At that gallery, Rathnayake painted posters, banners, and bodies, gave free art classes to children, and raised awareness of art. The gallery was burnt down by supporters of the President on 9 May. In response, Eshadi Yaddehiarachchi (with Rathnayake) painted 鈥淒o Not Burn Art鈥� using ash from charred paintings and her own blood. Rathnayake later marked the gallery鈥檚 destruction by burning an earlier work (appropriately enough from his Hallucination series) and re-titling it 鈥淎rtist鈥檚 Painting Set on Fire by the Artist.鈥� 

Rathnayake鈥檚 recent work focuses on how the new President quickly labelled protesters as 鈥渢errorists鈥� and used the draconian, 43-year-old to suppress the protest movement. One painting in the exhibitions shows a protester on the ground holding a sign proclaiming 鈥淧eople鈥檚 Sovereignty.鈥� The canvas is set into a large, rusting iron frame with words riveted on the top (鈥淧revention of Terrorism Act 1979鈥�) and the bottom (鈥淓nforced also during the economic crisis of 2022鈥�). As Rathnayake explained to us: 鈥淚 used metal frames to show how we are restricted and trapped by this old, rusted, outdated Act. 鈥� to show how state terrorism makes all of us who are subjected to it vulnerable.鈥� 

For the Harrow exhibition, Rathnayake painted several new works which will be exhibited for the first time. These works use police barrier tape to capture the severe limitations on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly that pervades Sri Lanka today.

To coincide with the 糖心Vlog exhibition, the 糖心Vlog Transitional Justice Network, Centre for Global South Studies, and are co-hosting a panel discussion on 6 July in which Rathnayake, Professor Sandya Hewamanne (Sociology), and Samanmali Alujjage Don (Sociology) will discuss Sri Lanka鈥檚 struggles. The panel also provides a comparative perspective: Dr Gavin Grindon talks about his work with protest art and 鈥溾�� in the UK and elsewhere; curator Dr Sarah Demelo explores 糖心Vlog鈥檚 remarkable collection of Latin American protest art; and curator Jessica Twyman discusses recent exhibitions of protest art on the university campus.