With or Without Meaning combines Jagath Weerasinghe’s painting, drawing and installation work as a philosophical expression of the transitory nature of being. In perhaps his least political works to date the series combines narratives of tradition, social norms and most of all change. The relevance of each work from their inherent meaning to their relation with one another presents a new dimension in Weerasinghe’s oeuvre. His painting Unfinished Landscape, based on the story of those crossing the waters in Nandikadal at the very final stages of the war, contrasts with his drawings of deconstructed traditional form and elements thereby extracting and confronting both his own role as an archaeologist alongside society’s resistance to change in the history of Sri Lanka. Weerasinghe’s drawings expose his romantic, poetic side; often completed during his travels, they become delicate, erotic depictions created in transit and coincidentally representative of a new stage in his life.
Saskia Fernando
2016
