ART in CURFEW is a series created in curfew by artists located all over Sri Lanka. Unlike many countries in the world that went into lockdown due to the pandemic, Sri Lanka entered enforced curfew on 14 March 2020, the curfew was lifted on 26 May 2020. During this time people were not allowed to leave their homes except for a few elected days where the government experimented with lifting the curfew to allow for people to purchase essentials. Eventually the government worked with essential services to focus on deliveries.
These works are being processed in an enforced quietude and many are a response to the pandemic. Accompanying the series the gallery live-streamed OPEN STUDIO sessions via instagram, allowing artists working in isolation to connect with an audience interested in sharing this intimate experience.
While the initial aim of ART in CURFEW was to highlight these responses and outcomes of the curfew in Sri Lanka, the platform has continued to evolve as artists continued to share works that were representative of their experiences in this state. The platform itself, in it's ever-changing form, has become a representation of the transient nature of this moment in time; it is now a documentation of works that will enable us, at some point in the future, to look back on these moments. Will we want to forget? How will we choose to memorialise? How and what will we remember?
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ART in CURFEW
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Muvindu Binoy
MythopoeticThe sketches titled 'Mythopoetic' are an amalgamation of the movies I rewatched, the albums I play in the background, the beats I make between intervals and my chronic socializing via interwebs due to quarantine and curfews. I would play the anime Akira on mute, crank up some Rei Ami tunes, one eye reading Bukowski quotes and the other looking through my Instagram news feed. All these things are happening while I'm sketching, coloring and cut-pasting magazines.
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Abdul Halik Azeez
Circumambulation[ sur-k*uh* m-**am**-by*uh*-leyt ] to circle on foot, especially ritualistically.
April 1, 2020 - In the face of the temporary cancellation of the future, the present acquires granularity and substance, at times calming, at times frustrating. The absence of a future brings an immediate feeling of relief ("there is nothing to worry about anymore!") and is quickly replaced by frustration ("why am I living if I don't have a future?") in repetitive waves of highs and lows. The resulting flux can seemingly only be smoothened out by a ritualistic, dogged determination to keep moving, keep acting, keep making meaning in defense of the wave of fatigue that threatens to overcome the body. The outside, meanwhile, seeps in through devices at a greater frequency and intensity as socializing and community become even more mediated through the internet. Economic, cultural and political incongruities, usually invisibilised by the rush and stress of daily existence, acquire stark contrast and in the process visibility, name-ability. Citizens find space to indulge in day-dreams old and new, giving rise to novel techno-futurisms in the process.
Postscript: May 14, 2020 - the fatigue that threatened to overcome the body, has overtaken the body. The temporary cancellation of the future is met and mirrored by the cancellation of the past. The present is now the what-is-inbetween, rotten butter (because the fridge broke down) sandwiched within two temporal non-entities. Sneak commuting in violation of non-laws, defying non-police-police, berated for non-criminal-crime. Elections in the time of social distancing, military omnipresence, ethnoracist media and Jeff Bezos happily on the way to becoming the world's first trillionaire.
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Fabienne Francotte
I Can Walk Mentally -
'Fondamenta' means foundation or base in architectural language, through these works I link it to the lack of landmarks/bases today. Drawing disembodied parts of bodies going blind and silently looking for anchorage. A walk along the edges. After I completed this series I broke my ankle. - Fabienne Francotte
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Fabienne Francotte
Fondamenta -
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Chandraguptha Thenuwara
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Firi Rahman
MenagerieIn the series 'Menagerie' I re-envision a museum diorama of animals, staging it in a dystopic urban environment, where animalspecies roam the crumbling remains of deserted scenes extracted from the gentrification of Colombo city. The work draws parallels between processes of extinction and loss of habitat and processes of urbanisation gentrification and evictions of peoples from their traditional homes. Essentially connecting these two processes situating both the urban masses andthe endangered wildlife as common oppressed, victims of a global capitalist/neoliberal agenda.The scenes are imagined in abandoned spaces, cleared of people and within sites of heritage architecture documented by the artistover the past three years and slated to be torn down in the process of making way for Colombo’s post-war urban developmentprogram. They highlight the fragility of neglected heritage sites, and critique the insensitive, one-size-fits-all violence ofColombo’s desire to become a ‘World Class City’.
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Ocean Isolation
Mika Tennekoon -
I worked on this series in lockdown on the south coast of Sri Lanka. Prior to lockdown I was able to experience the ocean everyday and having to withdraw from this was a struggle. I never appreciated the influence this connection brought to my art and as a source of meditation for my mental wellbeing. I could hear the ocean but I couldn’t see it; time slowed and stretched. The negatives I use in the collage are pictures I took of the ocean before the pandemic, the waves are painted in a natural pigment and the writings are excerpts from my journal. These works are an attempt to recreate this lost connection, an appreciation for the things that I have taken for granted.
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