An exhibition that has inspired another
View(s):A collection of books on contemporary Asian art displayed in a Jaffna ashram for three months has created great enthusiasm. Smriti Daniel speaks to the main movers behind the Open Edit: Mobile Library concept on the eve of their Colombo session
At first, T. Shanaathanan’s students didn’t quite know what to make of the Open Edit: Mobile Library. How would a mobile library even work? Was it in fact an exhibition? However, over the three months that the 400 hundred books lived in their quiet ashram in Jaffna they both fuelled and satisfied a curiosity that had gone unmet before. Collected by the Asia Art Archive (AAA), each book showcased contemporary art from the continent, offering many students from Jaffna University and other visitors from all over the island their first glimpses into the worlds of modern artists working in countries like China and Vietnam, in Taiwan, Hong Kong and India. As encounter piled upon encounter, the Sri Lankan students and artists were inspired to respond.
Students on a voyage of discovery in Jaffna and inset, Sunila Galapatti and Sharmini Pereira
These responses are now part of an exhibition that is coming to Colombo. “Whenever I used to go to class, I used to tell them, you can earn money from your art, you can exhibit,” Shanaathanan says over the phone from Jaffna. He is incredibly excited for his young students who conceptualised new artwork inspired by the archive, tackled writing proposals and were selected on pure merit to be a part of the exhibition alongside established artists. His arguments that a career in the arts need not dead end in a small teaching job are now suddenly believable. “Before they heard it only from me. This is the first time they are tasting it.”
Nine of his students made successful proposals but Shanaathanan is excited by how others have come from places like Puttalam, Nuwara Eliya and Ampara. This isn’t “Colombo-centric” instead it’s about new voices and unheard narratives from the “peripheries”. He credits the exposure the Mobile Library offered for drawing these artists out. “They’re producing work that is a turning point in the art history of the country,” he says, then goes on to describe the programme, rather beautifully, as having generated a “larger hope.”
Raking Leaves and its Director Sharmini Pereira planned and installed the Mobile Library at the invitation of AAA. (Sharmini, who commissions and publishes art projects has previously shepherded compelling books like ‘The One Year Drawing Project’ and ‘The Incomplete Thombu’ into collectors’ hands.) Though this project is nearly done, its legacy and their collaboration will extend through the soon to be established Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture & Design.
The second archive which will be presented alongside Mobile Library in Colombo is a first for Sri Lanka, Sharmini points out, explaining that after Mobile Library closes, the Sri Lankan archive will remain open – returning to Jaffna where it will be housed in an old colonial building for a year. In addition, copies of many materials collected by the Sri Lanka Archive will be donated to AAA, allowing future users of the latter to encounter more representations of Sri Lanka.
It’s quite a bit to take in but if you allow them, Sharmini and Sunila Galapatti, her part-time Assistant Director at Raking Leaves, will ask you to look most closely at the last three months the archives spent in Jaffna. “We felt that the artist scene in Jaffna was in a place where it would really benefit,” says Sharmini of their choice of location. While the AAA has travelled widely, Shanaathanan believes their decision to focus on students instead of established artists sets them apart. With students painting under trees and long classroom discussion shifted outdoors, the presence of the library inspired changes in the way standard curriculum was taught. “I had seen some of those books before, but seeing them all together was a total paradigm shift…the quality of the teaching changed” says Shanaathanan who is attached to the Art History Department at the Jaffna University and also serves as a coordinator for the art and design department there.
For Sharmini, Shanaathananan and Sunila the focus must also be on how to keep the momentum. Sharmini would like to build on the Sri Lanka archive and hopes to be able to anchor other projects in it and have it inspire artists and thinkers to initiate their own. Shanaathananan is dreaming of more contemporary, region specific books for his students and revamping the way they teach art. Still ahead is a two day programme of sessions that will bring the AAA project to a close. “We are not unambitious,” says Sunila, her eyes twinkling.
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