Jagath Weerasinghe Sri Lankan , b. 1954

In Discovery of Histories, Jagath Weerasinghe presents a gradual yet profound shift in his artistic practice, which spans over four decades. Shifting from his earlier critique of the ethnolinguistic nationalism that fueled decades of violence in Sri Lanka, the works in this exhibition engage with the wider, increasingly fragmented political landscape of the world. Created between 2020 and 2024, these new works reflect the deep social and political upheavals brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and political turmoil in Sri Lanka, alongside growing global unrest. Weerasinghe’s gestural brushstrokes, sporadic and charged with energy, mirror his attempt to grasp the bewildering and flawed logic behind global liberalism and its repercussions. Through these works, he explores how systemic injustices have created an escalating wave of violence and suffering for innocent people worldwide.

The exhibition presents a selection of works created from 1989 to the first half of the 1990s, created in the years preceding his 1992 Anxiety (Kansawa) show, that locate the themes and ideas that dominate the artist’s three-decade-long year including works that are visual and thematic precursors to his notable series I have got enough guilt to start my own religion, crucify me.

In this series, created between April/May 2019, Weerasinghe responds to the Easter Attacks that occurred in Sri Lanka. In Los Angeles during this time, Weerasinghe began a smaller series of...