Colombo Art Biennale created a platform for many artists to showcase their talents this year, and one project that caught my eye at the Colombo Art Biennale was the work of Sachini Perera and Natalie Soysa titled “I was. I am”.

The piece showcased by this duo was unique because of the strong message sent across, which concerned the ethnic conflict and the issues faced by women during the turbulent years surrounding the ethnic conflict.

The project would be considered a success because of the minimalistic approach used and yet able to transcend a bold message. With daring artistic techniques being used to converse a message to the public it was surely a reason to have a conversation with the artistic and multifaceted duo regarding their project “I was. I am”.

Sachini Perera, is a freelance photographer, writer, activist and also a graduate from the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is a strong believer in the power of photojournalism where a story is told from a photograph itself and her work has been published in many leading Sri Lankan newspapers and webzines. In addition to photojournalism, her repertoire includes travel photography, music photography and portraiture.

She was one of the first photographers to photograph live performances in the burgeoning alternative music scene of Sri Lanka. Her debut solo photography exhibition in 2013 featured photographs of Sri Lankan musicians as well as original music by them. She has also exhibited her work in India.

In April 2013, Sachini was one of the speakers at a TEDxChange event organized in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on the theme of “positive disruption”. Sachini is currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, working for the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), a regional women’s organization.

Natalie Soysa can be described as a wearer of many creative hats, since she is a photographer, writer, producer, curator, creative consultant, vocalist and thespian. She retired from her 13 year career in advertising and picked up her first camera soon after. Over the past 3 years, she has combined her new found eye for photography with her existing resources of idea generation, writing and design to help her become an artist and advocate of social issues.

She began chronicling the emerging post-war explosion of arts and culture in the country in many leading publications and webzines. Her journey has led her to her current position which is the head of arts at The British Council, Sri Lanka, where she now focuses on conceptualising and running multi-disciplinary arts projects in the country.

Natalie has a large body of photographs in travel, conceptual portraiture, social documentary and art photography. She has exhibited her work 5 times in both Sri Lanka and India. Natalie shared her story at TEDx in Sri Lanka last November, taking the audience on a journey of self-discovery post quitting the corporate world, titled “Out of the Box & into the Cubicle?”

With regard to their joint project, Natalie and Sachini say that they wanted to capture the opinions and narratives of women who have not been given a voice before and also to capture alternative perspectives of the last 30 years in Sri Lanka and one of the reasons they have been keen on doing this project is because both of them have been either directly or indirectly affected by the Black July Pogrom and the 3 decade long war that ensued, and not wanting the next 30 years to be like the last.

According to the duo, the project was also about exploring the experiences of women of different generations by understanding common experiences and whether there has been progress in addressing the issues faced by women, or whether it has regressed.

This project has initially come about through Groundviews and the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), where the two organisations together planned an initiative called “30 years ago” which is a memorium piece to map the last 30 years through the eyes of 7 sets of producers, artistes, activists, theorists and journalists.

At first Sachini was invited to be a part of the initiative by the two organisations, during which both Natalie and Sachini have decided to work together. The duo says that it made sense to collaborate together for this project because of their respective backgrounds, and to see where the project took them.

“I was. I am” was initially launched in August 2013 by Groundviews along with the rest of the pieces created for the “30 Years Ago” initiative, where the piece received a lot of press. And as a result the conceptual series of photographs the duo produced for the project was re-published in PIX, a global photography quarterly, last December.

The Colombo Art Biennale was in fact the 3rd time the project “I was. I am.” was exhibited which the artists are quite proud of. And the duo says that if there are opportunities to screen it in the future, they most definitely will, whether it is in Sri Lanka or abroad.

In a conservative country such as ours artistic works created based on nudity sometimes does not attract the artistic appreciation the artist desires, Sachini and Natalie say that they both believe in the need to push the boundaries of their work and it was less about the need to depict nudity and more about effectively communicating their story, and they needed a perfect balance between art and journalism, which they think they have managed to achieve pretty well, which I would definitely agree on.

With regard to the assistance they got for the project, they say that many people came together to make this project happen. But most of all, Natalie and Sachini would like to (again) thank the 43 dynamic women they interviewed and photographed for this project and as well as the very brave Miss. Christina Britto who posed for their conceptual series.

The possibility of the two working together was the last question that was directed at these talented artists, and they say that they will continue to work together when they can. Even though they both have their own projects, their working chemistry has proved that this is most certainly not the beginning nor end of their collaborative work.

By Radhi De Silva