Nuwan Nalaka returns to his floral and vegetal motifs in Prakriti,a series of brilliant and scintillating paintings that deliberate on feminine energy, sexuality and the erotic. Nuwan Nalaka’s engagement with Hindu and Buddhist ideas continues in this series. The flower vases are but a sanitized representation of a female figure in birthing position, Lajja Gauri — an ancient concept with Tantric associations that connote fertility and sexuality. They are also an allusion to the Poorna Ghata, the pot of plenty, which reaffirm the ideas of abundance and prosperity. In his mediation, the artist reappropriates and reimagines these ancient iconographies, leading essentially to the same interpretation. Separated from its natural environment and retained as a decorative ornament within the confinement of a receptacle, the works lead us to an inquiry into the biological potential of flowers. In this context, it probes the limits of agency, freedom and of expression that a woman is granted.