Artful Resistance

The exhibition Artful Resistance presented for the first time in Austria, Germany, and Norway a comprehensive overview of paintings, graphic art, photography, sculptures, and installations by established as well as emerging voices in the Sri Lankan art community. In their works, Sri Lanka’s contemporary artists deal with issues of global concern—the simultaneity of tradition and modernity, urbanization, consumer society, gender roles, religion and politics, cultural difference, or the destructive effects of war and terrorism on society—and in their artistic self-consciousness resist both categorization by Western art hierarchies as well as confinement by national and cultural identities. Their provocative, ironic, or contemplative comments reflect a multi-faceted image of contemporary Sri Lankan art and society.

The exhibition catalog fully illustrates eighty artworks by thirty-three artists selected for the show. A series of essays explore different aspects of contemporary art production in Sri Lanka in historical, cultural, art historical, and anthropological perspective. Intended as a forum of dialogue between scholarly and artistic positions, as well as between European and Sri Lankan views, it aims to include Sri Lankan art into a global discourse on contemporary art and culture.

Table of Contents

Jagath Weerasinghe: An Overview of Modernisms in Sri Lankan Art of the Twentieth Century

Sasanka Perera: Politics of Showing, Seeing, and Remembering: Dynamics of Historiography in Contemporary Sri Lankan Visual Arts

Sarath Chandrajeewah: Modern Art in Sri Lanka and Its Socio-political Environment

T. Shanaathanan: Visual Art in Jaffna: A Register from the Periphery

Anoli Perera: Women Artists in Sri Lanka: Are They the Carriers of the Women’s Burden?

Sanjeewa Kumara and Sujeewa Kumari: A New Millennium: Beyond Postcolonial Identity

Sylvia S. Kasprycki and Doris I. Stambrau: Artful Resistance: Contemporary Art from Sri Lanka

Doris I. Stambrau: Future Artists? A Collection of Children’s Art from Sri Lanka

Asoka de Zoysa: The Pixalized Comfort Zone

Anoli Perera and G. R. Constantine: Artists as Art Managers: Theertha International Artists’ Collective

Artists and Artworks in the Exhibition