Artists Featured In Colombo Art Biennale 2016 

Colombo Art Biennale established in 2009, is aimed to promote and place contemporary Sri Lankan artists on the map on an international scale. Keeping this core value in mind, this year the Colombo Art Biennale will feature 45 artists of which 24 will be local. Out of the 24, 3 are well established, mid-career artists, and the rest comprise of young, emerging artists from around the island. For the selection of artists for the Biennale, CAB sent out an open call- this year and they have had a significant number of applications from the North and East. 

Let’s meet some of the local artists who will be taking part in this years’ Colombo Art Biennale. Some are based here and some away. This platform will help bring them to one place to stage their exhibits and performances. 

Saskia Pintelon 

Belgium-born Saskia Pintelon, has spent the last 36 years living in Sri Lanka, a defining influence and a continual inspiration for her work. Her paintings are very personal and yet encompass a wide range of universal concerns in strong, layered images. Senior Sri Lankan artist, Pintelon has shown her work in galleries in Asia and Europe. She participated in the 2009 Colombo Art Biennale in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Inspired by local and universal issues, stories from the gut and the heart, politics and day-to-day concerns, her body of works interprets the collective human experience, environment and the cycle of life with intimate and personal preoccupations. 

Nadia Haji Omar 

She currently lives and works in the US and is of Syrian, Indian and Sri Lankan descent. She received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY in 2014 and a BA from Bard College, NY in 2007. One of her Solo exhibitis “I Dream of Water” can be viewed at the Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo. 

Pakkiyarajah Pushpakanthan 

He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Pushpakanthan has exhibited in group exhibitions organized by the university's faculty of Arts, as well as exhibited at Saskia Fernando Gallery in Colombo. Most recently he has exhibited at the 'Shadow Scenes' exhibition curated by Natasha Ginwala and Menika van der Poorten as a part of Colomboscope 2015. The mood of Pushpakanthan's work is intentionally unsettling as he draws inspiration from his experiences of conflict & trauma from the war in the North. 

Savesan Nallaiah 

He too holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka and has exhibited in group exhibitions organized by the university's faculty of Arts, as well as exhibited at Saskia Fernando Gallery in Colombo. His luridly painted, almost child-like, canvases are in stark contrast to the graphic and sexual nature of the subject he explores. 

Tracy Holsinger 

She founded the Mind Adventures Theatre Company in 1999 and has served as its Artistic Director since. Her graduate and postgraduate qualifications in theatre are from Goldsmiths College and Trinity Guildhall, London. Her work has been featured at the GalleLiterary Festival, Colomboscope, Metroplus (India) and Ubumuntu (Rwanda). Tracy’s work focuses on socio-political issues of special relevance to Sri Lanka, and has been supported over the years by the Sunethra Bandaranaike Trust, The British Council, The Goethe Institute, GIZ and the governments of Switzerland and Japan. Since 2009, Mind Adventures has used devised and immersive theatre to highlight the need for reconciliation and community building in Sri Lanka, and is currently engaged in creating a countrywide tour that is funded by the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation. In addition, Tracy has 18 years of arts education experience, having worked in various capacities with The Wendy Whatmore Academy, The British School and the Open University of Sri Lanka. 

Firi Rahman 

He is a self taught artist from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Firi's work consists of hyper realistic drawings of portraits and maps. He explores themes such as conservation, and beauty and expresses them with his skilled pencil work. He held his first solo exhibition “Unconventional Beauty” at the Saskia Fernando Gallery in 2015. That same year, his map of Slave Island was featured in Colomboscope - Shadow Scenes. In December 2015, he was invited to speak at the Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art. He is currently working on an awareness program about animal welfare with the Otara Foundation. He is also part of a group show curated by Priyantha Udagedara, and is also involved in a visual storytelling project using participatory photography. 

Liz Fernando 

She is an award-winning fine artist and photographer, born and raised in Germany , she graduated from the University of Arts, London, LCC. The concept of an evolving interplay between the fragile and fugitive existence of a photograph lies at the heart of Fernando’s work, which often derives itself from asense of nostalgia, building upon a personal archive of aesthetic and practical reflections within non-western cultures. Her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London and showcased by Photoworks UK. Her highly acclaimed work, “Trincomalee – My Father’s Stories and the Lost Photographs” was recently acquired for the private collection of the World Bank Headquarters in Washington DC and is currently on an international traveling exhibition. Fernando lives and works in London, Hanover and Colombo. 

Vijitharan M 

He has graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, from the University of Jaffna. M.Vijitharan’s body of work narrates the experiences of civilians of the Vanni in the north of Sri Lanka during and post war. The artist utilizes objects and forms from their story to create drawings and installations that act as a narrative. 

Samvarthini Gunaseharam 

She is also a graduate in Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Jaffna. Her recent works explore the experience of place in the relation to memory. The content of her work deals with five years of continuous back and forth travel from Puttalam to Jaffna passing through Anuradhapura, Vavuniya and Kilinochchi. She was a part of Srilankan Artists, An Exhibition of Seven conversations, at the Saskia Fernando Gallery, 2015. She also had another show in 2013 titled ‘Introducing my village’ at Park Street Mews. 

Anoma Wijewardena 

She studied and worked in the UK for three decades as a designer and artist and now divides her time between London and Sri Lanka where her studio is now based. Anoma’s designs have been displayed at the V&A Museum and the House of Commons in London and been shown in the USA, Japan and Europe. Clients have included Yves St Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, and have been featured in several international publications including the cover of Vogue Magazine in the UK. She was also one of the painters selected by India for the SAARC art Exhibition which toured the 7 capitals of the SAARC region. 

Venuri Perera 

She is a performer and performance maker from Sri Lanka. Trained in Kandyan Dance under Vajira and Upeka Chitrasena, she was a member of the Chitrasena Dance Company from 1994 to 2007. In 2008, she completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Dance from Laban, London, where she was awarded the Michelle Simone prize for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for her solo, Abhinishkramanaya. 

Kanesh Thabendran 

He holds a Bachelor of Art and Design from the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Thabendran has exhibited in group exhibitions organized by the university’s faculty of Arts, as well as exhibited at Saskia Fernando Gallery in Colombo. His work deals with his family’s struggle to safeguard their household items during and after the war as well as the loss that his family faced when so many of their items went missing. Cutting out of photographs helps the artist come to terms with his reality. 

Pradeep Thalawatta 

He graduated from Beacon house National University in 2016 with a MFA in Fine Art. Solo exhibitions of his work have included 'A Different Road', Lionel Wendt Gallery Colombo, Sri Lanka (2012) He has also participated in several group exhibitions such as: 'South by Southeast',Osage Hong Kong (2015); the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Christie’s, Hong Kong (2015); 'Serendipity Revealed', Brunei Gallery, London (2014)'; the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial Japan, (2014) etc. He also has received a Commonwealth Connections International Arts Residency, at Shanthi Road, Bangalore, India. Pradeep was born in Rathnapura. He currently lives and works in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

Gayan Prageeth Samaranayaka 

He is one of the island’s strongest emerging artists. His works have moved further into controversial politics facing the island over the past years. The subtlety with which he approaches his subject combined with a strong detail in his technique make him part of the growing trend of artists choosing to use contrast as a mechanism of representation in their art. 

Poornima Thenuwara 

Through public participatory interactive art works, Poornima boldly engages with the audience, where the viewer participates in some way by providing an input in order to determine the outcome. She is currently working as head of Art at the British School in Colombo. She is a co-founder and a director of the Collective of Contemporary Artists (CoCA) - the first pioneering art organization in Sri Lanka which focuses on socially-engaged and sustainable art in public spaces. They also engage in research-based art, and encourages diverse audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate and appreciate arts. The organization emphasises on and promotes ‘sustainable art’ in harmony with the key principles of sustainability that includes ecology, social justice, non-violence and grassroots democracy. 

Abdul Halik Azeez 

He is a strategy consultant working both for the corporate and development sectors. He is also an independent researcher whose main areas of interest currently include online hate speech and critical discourse analysis. With a Master's in financial economics and a Bachelor in international business, Halik has worked in fields as diverse as marketing, banking and economic research. 

Chinthaka Thenuwara 

He is an international and local award winning photographer/ artist. Within his art practice ‘Time’ is represented as a symbolic process and deals with the inherent contradictions of the sociopolitical and cultural context in Sri Lanka. Time based mediums and art forms such as Kinetic Art, Interactive Art, Video, installations, sculptures, photography and paintings are widely use within his art practice. He is the co-founder and director of the Collective of Contemporary Artists (CoCA). His work has been shown as part of CoCA Artists group at the CAB 2012, Goethe-Institut, Beyond Perception at Park Street Mews, French Spring Festival, “Pettah Expose” at the CMC Building Pettah, CAB 2014, Vijayanagar Residency 2014 India, Colomboscope 2013, 2015, 2016 and various other local and international exhibitions. 

Sujeewa Kumari 

She is a silent force in local contemporary art. She was educated at the University of Kelaniya and then completed her MFA at the Dutch Art Institute in the Netherlands. Kumari has held solo shows in the UK, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands. Kumari paints, draws and performs her art as and when she feels like it. There is something incredibly free about Kumari's works, they exaggerate the presence of texture in objects, transforming them into tactile representations of femininity. The subject of her work is based on the her personal experiences of motherhood, her research into post-colonial costumes of Sri Lanka and contrasting techniques which emphasize each concept. Kumari continues to have a nonchalant attitude to describing her work. There is something that occurs between the work and it's viewer that she refuses to allow an explanation to destroy, this in itself is the essence of her work; mystery. 

Udani Samaraweera 

She is a 20 year old artist currently studying interior design at Academy of design, Sri Lanka. She has been passionate about drawing since a young age. She is intrigued by vivid colours and patterns, which she combines together to create extraordinary pieces of work. Experimenting with different techniques using various media to create unusual, striking art pieces is her forte. 

Rajini Perera 

She explores issues of hybridity, sacrilege, irreverence, the indexical sciences, ethnography, gender, sexuality, popular culture, deities, monsters and dream worlds. She has a B.F.A. in Drawing & Painting, from OCAD University, Canada. Her awards and grants include Nora E. Vaughan Award, OCAD University 2011, First Capital Realty, Imagination Zone Award 2011, Toronto Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant 2014. 

Danushka Marasinghe 

He was born and raised in Negombo, Sri Lanka. He studied at the Digital Film Academy, Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Colombo and Faculty of Visual Arts, The University of Visual and Performing Arts Colombo (2007) and was part of the Art need space Public art workshop at German Culture Center, Colombo in 2011. Marasinghe is primarily a video-artist interested in exploring modern society, through sociopolitical issues, surveillance and the modern manifestations of privacy, or lack thereof. 

Dr. Priyantha Udagedara 

His principal research interests lie in the field of contemporary fine art practice focusing upon South Asia. His PhD research explores the contextual analysis of the “Notion of Paradise” in its relationship to socio-political ideology within the limitations of visual art. His future research plans will build on the foundations of his PhD to further develop research in visual art practice within Sri Lanka and the region. He has particular expertise and research interest in colonial-art, post colonial art and contemporary Western and Eastern visual culture. He is a practicing artist specializing in paintings and has exhibited nationally and internationally in countries including Sri Lanka, India, Australia, Portugal, Dubai and Great Britain. 

Kavan Balasuriya 

He is a visual artist living and exhibiting in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The artist is a graduate of the BA Fine Art Course at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London. In Kavan’s work, textural expositions and schemata are explored in the conveyance of a contextual understanding of language and identity. The artist has held two solo exhibitions in Colombo, as well as participating in numerous showcases including Cinnamon Colomboscope’s Shadow Scenes (2015), Testing Grounds (2016), and ColomboFashion Week’s CFW: Frame (2016). 

Asvajit Boyle 

He is an audio/visual artist and graphic designer with a special interest in long-form design. He has designed and overseen the production of several commercial publications in collaboration with theatre repertories, music and arts festivals, magazines, and non-government organizations. In recent years, Asvajit has created audio-visual experiences, interactive digital installations and digital collages. As a composer and performer of electronic music, his work has been released on record labels world-wide and showcased at music festivals and nightlife institutions in Europe and Asia. A proponent for the development of non-traditional forms of music in Sri Lanka, Asvajit works with the Goethe-Institut to implement workshops, artist residencies and performances including the annual Pettah Interchange showcase. He is also the founder and curator of Jambutek Recordings, an independent electronic music imprint and artist collective based in Colombo.