| Thisath Thoradeniya’s most recent thematic engagement in sculpture shows the intense allure of technological and electronic products found in everyday environments.
In a series of sculptures titled ‘Me and You’ he explores the thematic of ‘gendered notions of everyday objects’ where he highlights the categorization of certain objects in society as feminine/female and masculine/male. The initial attempt of this series was seen in his work titled ‘+ and –’ which depicts a larger than life-size plug base and plug top. Thoradeniya’s recent work illustrates his obvious attraction to common technological items such as computers, electrical wires and switches etc.
In today’s context, saturated with electrical and electronic gadgetry, these items have become commonplace objects that are perceived merely as functional. Thoradeniya’s work draws us to this aspect of these electrical and electronic apparatuses and asks us the question, “are they only functional in terms of making our lives’ chores efficient?”
In his series of work titled ‘Me and You’, he consciously engages in two activities. One is to take the most mundane and ‘taken for granted’ objects from the arena of common electronic apparatuses and transform them into large scale versions. Through this transformation, he presents these objects to us as ‘unique’ objects. The other is, through this very process of enlarging, he subtly allows these objects to obtrude a sense of masculinized and feminized erotic sensations.
Both these actions probed us to think beyond the mere mechanical functionalities of these objects and go into the mechanics of their particular design and forms. The advertising industry, the nature of consumerism, economies that operate to sustain consumer markets, new inventions and new tastes inform us that the objects we consume come through a highly manipulated process in terms of their design, form and concept to meet the need they are going to satisfy in society. Therefore, design and form of an object is never innocent. Creating desire becomes an essential component of market strategies -therefore, imbuing a sense of sensuality and sexuality into design is not an accident or a coincidence.
Thoradeniya’s art that blows up into larger scale the most mundane and common-place electrical items such as a toggle switch with its phallic shaft and an enlarged computer mouse making bare a topography of a vagina hints at the eroticization inherent in these unassuming objects. It is as if he places these objects on a lab table under a microscope that would enlarge them for us for closer scrutiny.
With the eroticization of objects/products, another aspect of their design comes to surface. This has to do with their genderization. The terminology used in electronics and electric discourses as well as the physical sciences in general such as ‘female socket’, ‘male jack’, ‘plus and minus terminals’ implicitly draw attention to female and male biological references.
The artist
Born in 1975, Thisath Thoradeniya received his initial art training at the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Art.
He has been working as an artist and exhibiting in group exhibitions in Sri Lanka and abroad since 2000, notably art residencies in Bangladesh and Mauritius. His work exhibited in the Asian Art biennale 2008 in Dhaka, Bangladesh received honorable mention. Thoradeniya also works as a coordinator for artists’ residencies and workshops held in Sri Lanka.
His exhibition, ‘You and Me’, is now on till March 4 at the Red Dot Gallery at 36A, Baddegana Road South, Pitakotte.
Gallery hours are Monday to Wednesday: 10.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.
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