Colomboscope “Way of the Forest” will be held from 19 - 28 January 2024 across several venues in Colombo. The eighth edition of the festival is shaped with over 40 Sri Lankan and international artists and collectives. Interwoven with interdisciplinary programmes “Mushroomings” ranging from conversations, excursions, performances, workshops, open-air cinema and listening experiences realised with a host of cultural partners. Colomboscope 2024 is curated by Hit Man Gurung, Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Sarker Protick, with artistic director Natasha Ginwala.

Curatorial Introduction

Way of the Forest converges artistic pathways to rekindle knowledge of interdependence, custodianship, and restorative practices across rainforests, wilderness, mountain cultivations, and riverine wetlands. It invites deschooling – moving from the curriculum of plunder, reckless supremacy and extinction, to embrace active listening beyond the human sensorium. The forest as a lexicon holds a plenitude of meaning across languages: Aaranya in Tamil and Sanskrit relating to a sanctuary, vana in Sinhala. Bonn, Jongol, and Aranno in Bangla, gumṁ in Nepal Bhasa, tem in Tamu-each evoking distinct states of being, emotions, disparate imagination, and a palpable climate. The multi-chapter exhibition at Colomboscope 2024 and accompanying events are an intricate study of our eroding ecological histories, of lost environmental wisdoms, monstrous developmental agendas, and ghosts of extraction. It endeavours to plot legacies of colonisation of resources and minds that operate in disguise.

Within mutating landscapes, artists question who owns forest lands, who gets displaced, and who is restricted from sites marked for conservation. What do the spirits of these lands, rivers, and forests whisper in our ears? In many folktales, legends, and mythologies, forests are associated with apparitions, witches, and other mystical beings. These entities are often depicted as powerful and independent, existing beyond the reach of societal constraints. They are also spaces that elicit fear, of things unknown, and forces beyond human control. With the rise of imperialism, the exploitation of natural resources and abuse of primary inhabitants was exacerbated as a fulfilment of greed, power, and ego. The subjugation of jungles and wildernesses is then portrayed as a victory over the vastness, unruliness, and mysticism of forests. Many Indigenous peoples find themselves navigating nation-states driven by corporate capitalism and geopolitical hegemony.

Throughout this struggle, there have been profound transitions marked by loss, change, resistance, and at times, even hopelessness. Revolutionaries, outcasts, and borderline beings find solace and refuge within the forest’s sheltering embrace. Its dense foliage and shaded paths provide a sense of secrecy and protection, allowing those seeking autonomy and freedom to gather and organise away from prying eyes, to recalibrate uncertainty and fear, to dream of alternative power structures, of new world orders.

Participants

Anoma Wijewardene / Anupam Roy / Anushka Rustomji / U. Arulraj / Barbara Sansoni /Chija Lama / Dumiduni Illangasinghe / Fernando García-Dory / Jayatu Chakma Karachi LaJamia / Karunasiri Wijesinghe / Kieren Karritpul / Komal Purbe, Madhumala Mandal, Rebati Mandal and Selo Yadav / Krisushananthan Inkaran / Kulagu Tu Buvongan /Laki Senanayake / Memory, Truth and Justice / Mónica de Miranda / Müge YılmazNahla al Tabbaa / Otobong Nkanga / Pankaja Withanachchi & Roshan De Selfa /Pathum Dharmarathna / Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah / Rakibul Anwar / MTF Rukshana Ruwangi Amarasinghe / Sangita Maity / Sanod Maharjan / Saodat Ismailova /Sarmila Sooriyakumar with Pirainila Krishnarajah / Shehan Obeysekera / Shiraz Bayjoo /Soma Surovi Jannat / Spore Initiative with U Yits Ka’an, Colectivo Suumil Móokt’aan, Rafiki Sánchez, and Cecilia Moo / Subas Tamang / Sunita Maharjan and Sanjeev Maharjan Tamara Jayasundera / Thava Thajendran / The Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care with Myriam Mihindou, Tawfiq Sediqi and Elena Sorokina / Thujiba Vijayalayan /Trent Walter / Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson / Zihan Karim.

Collaborators

A Thousand Channels with Syma Tariq / BLAK C.O.R.E. / Chennai Photo Biennale Collective of Contemporary Artists (CoCA) / Dharamshala International Film Festival with Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam / KACHA KACHA with Imaad Majeed / Kälam Ka(ra)mi / Ghost 2561-2565 with Korakrit Arunanondchai & Christina Li/Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka (MMCA) / Musicmatters Non-Applicable (N/A) with Asvajit Boyle and Nigel Perera / Norient with Coco Em Parrotfish Collective / Small Cat Advocacy and Research (SCAR) with Firi Rahman SpaceEka / The Packet / Visual Art and Experiences Group (VAEG) among others.

Exhibition Venues

J.D.A. Perera Gallery / SNAFU Project / Public Library Garden / Barefoot Gallery

Programme Venues

SNAFU Project / Goethe-Institut Garden / Public Library Garden / BMICH Kamatha Open Theatre Ex-Government Servicemen Sports Club / CoCa Symbiosis / SpaceEka / Barefoot MMCA / Beddagana Wetland Park

Guest Curators’ Biographies

Hit Man Gurung is an artist and curator based in Kathmandu by way of Lamjung. Gurung’s diverse practice concerns itself with the fabric of human mobilities, frictions of history, and failures of revolutions. While rooted in the recent history of Nepal, his works unravel a complex web of kinships and extraction across geographies that underscore the exploitative nature of capitalism. These narratives revolve around the lived experiences of migrants caught between a dehumanizing transnational labour-based industry and an apathetic nation-state. He furthermore invokes indigenous methodologies and epistemologies to fundamentally reconfigure contemporary artistic praxis. He has participated in exhibitions in many places including  SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2020); Biennale of Sydney (2020) and  Artspace Sydney (2019).  He was the cocurator for the Kathmandu Triennale (2022), Nepal Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2022), ‘Garden of Ten Seasons’ at Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2022) and ’12 Baishakh,’ Bhaktapur (2015) alongside Sheelasha Rajbhandari. He has also co-founded ArtTree Nepal an artist collective and Kalṁ Kulo an arts initiative.

Sheelasha Rajbhandari is an artist and curator based out of Kathmandu. Her works draw upon an embodied and speculative lineage of femininities to question the positioning of women across time, landscapes, and cosmologies. Her practice is a provocation to reflect beyond the neo-liberal conception of time to de-centre patriarchal structures that perpetuate cycles of industrial extraction and individual exhaustion. For her, art-making is about making space for collective action. This questioning feeds into her recent artistic and curatorial approach that recomposes notions of Indigeneity, gender, worth, and productivity. Her installation in the travelling exhibition “A beast, a god and a line” (2018-2020) was presented at Para Site, Hong Kong; TS1, Yangon; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Kunsthall, Trondheim; and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai. She has also been an artist in residence at the Bellas Artes Projects (2019) and Para Site (2017). She has furthermore exhibited at many places including Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2022) and Weltmuseum Wien (2019). She is also the co-founder of ArtTree Nepal an artist’s collective and Kalṁ Kulo an arts initiative. Sarker Protick’s photographs frequently build the narrative around the trope of change; momentary stillness, fleeting light, elemental origins of a place and a lost home. To make the decaying memory tangible, to define the disappearing history of a place without confining it, Protick’s often minimal, suspended and atmospheric visuals are coherently open with vast and solemn distance. Working with Photography, Video and Sound, Protick’s works are built on long-term surveys rooted in Bangladesh. Protick is a co-curator of Chobi Mela, the longest running International Photography Festival in Asia. His work has received several recognition and fellowships, including Joop Swart Masterclass, Foam Talent, Light Work Residency, Magnum Foundation Fund, World Press Photo Award etc. Protick is represented by the Shrine Empire in Delhi.

Artistic Director

Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher and writer, co-curator, of Sharjah Biennial 16 (2023-25), artistic director of Colomboscope, Sri Lanka since 2019 and associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018 – 2024). She was also the artistic director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale with Defne Ayas (2021). Ginwala has been part of curatorial teams of 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014), Contour Biennale 8, document 14 (2017), Taipei Biennale 2012 and co-curated several international exhibitions. Pix courtesy Colomboscope