Art of collecting sea shells.

Seascape is one of the favorite spaces of mine. I wonder the various colour scheme of blue when I look through the water and the sky. The unlimited space and the sound of waves takes me in to another world. Every time when I go to the sides I focus to collecting something different. I specially prepare myself to find out them in different forms and collect and keep them carefully. And I find out my kind of people for the co-operation.  I found out that I had this kind of interest from my childhood. When I go back through my past I remember the days which I pleased my schoolmates to get some shells from their collections. And nobody give anything to me and I keep asking my parents to go to the beach for collect them and unfortunately our hometown (Vavuniya) is located in the middle of our island so it was difficult to go to the beach and it was very expensive to make family tour at that time. But now everything has changed. When I come to Jaffna for my studies the first thing I wonder was about the seascapes. We have a lot of beaches around the city. And I am getting chances to take my friends to the sea sides who come from the other regions. I have a huge collection of shells now and keep sharing with some of my friends who really wanted to keep with them. And I am happy to do it because sharing things with others is the good sense and only the human’s ability. 


                                   
                                 

                                          

                                   

                                        

                                         

The politics & aesthetics of Space:

Colonial Buildings in Oorkavathurai (kayts)

‘Is there a space, there is aesthetic. Is there aesthetic there is politics.’ I keep thinking about these words from my bachelor’s studies. Most of our theory classes based with these two words aesthetics & politics. Politics is different by person and the political thinking came from the selfishness. It is built up when a person or a community start to think only their purpose without any thinking about others. By my understanding I keep this definition for ‘politics’.

Recently there was a talk at the university by Brintha Kulasingam who is a temporary lecturer at the fine arts department. She submitted her reading on the Colonial building of Oorkavathurai (Kayts. Orkavathurai is the second harbor (Naturally formed) of Sri Lanka. In the Colonial period it was a very famous town which celebrated by the colonial kings.  It was very interesting the way she presented it and she very clearly argued the connection of the aesthetics and the politics through the history.

*Introduction of the place (The form and the landscape the meaning of the name, etc).

*History of the Generations who lived and ruled the place in the past, how was it famous and for what & the current situation of the place

*The buildings of the Place (The forts, churches, Hospitals, schools, homes.) & the style, period, regional influence, builders, medium, destruction and renovation.

*The political connections through the form (aesthetics) of these buildings- Tackling and rule, spread religion, addiction, profiling status, race, caste separation.

*conclusion & questions.

These are the main parts of the reading and it is not possible to write all about it because I like to keep the copyrights of the researcher. I was visited to the place in 2017 and I keep the images with me. So I decided this would be the correct moment to share the images of the place.

Jaffna Photography Festival- 2019

November 22-25

It's About Time- Mobile Museum and the exhibition.

This is an Exhibition of the memories held in the first week of November. And the project was started to make an understanding between the three races people of Sri Lanka by the Historical Dialogue team. It was my luck visit to the space and also got an invitation for the book launch. These are the images of the display, will take a time to write about the whole features of the project very soon.

Re-Tooling workshop#1: hacking the system

In October 19 & 20 I got a chance to participate in the workshop. The two days were very useful for me. As a practicing artist I wanted to gain some knowledge about the current system of art world. Especially the functions about the Galleries, art festivals, biennials. And finally I felt that I came to the correct point to find out it. The workshop had organized by Colomcoscope. And it was held in a coolest place called Gampola which is located in the middle of Sri Lanka. Between the hills and huge mountains there is a home- like Hotel where we all gathered and stayed for two days. Personally this was the first time to me travel alone to the upcountry and I was the only person who visit from Jaffna. I was excited to reach the hotel as a first member in our team and reached around 4.30 pm in that dark rainy evening. I had to wait for the other members who arrived in the late night and we all welcomed by Iromi and Luca who are the owners of the whole property of the hotel ‘Ellerton’.   

The curator of Colomboscope Natasha Ginnwala introduced about the program and explained the aim of the workshop in the morning session. And all the sessions had completed one by one according the schedule.

*Terms & conditions

*Spatial Practice

*Print Matters

*Case Studies

Were the topics of the schedule and there were some group activities in the middle. They were very useful. We could discuss about the problems what we are facing in practicing. Also we could talk about the issues about gallery spaces and art festivals specially the positive and negative sides of them. All the members shared their own experiences. We had chance to do the presentation about what we did in the past and the present days. I also got chance to do some translation in the middle of the sessions it helped to focus the whole sessions with attention. Over all the gathering gave a lot of energy. I could meet some of my artist friends after a long time from the South and East. Also the curators and designers as well. In the end the curator introduced the next Colomboscope which is going to be in 2021. Finally we end up the two day workshop with the strong conclusion and farewell with the lovely dinner. I stayed the night and came back to Jaffna in the next day.