Never again 83: Thenuwara’s yearly artistic ritual
From Fragile: An exhibition by students
Chandragupta Thenuwara is busy overseeing the skeleton of his latest exhibition calcify at the Saskia Fernando Gallery. With paint-daubed fingers, just in from his studio in Athurugiriya, he is lost in the minutiae of where the floor tile installations that form part of the oeuvre should go; and where his famous ‘barrels’ should stand guard.
His yearly July exhibition (this year happening from July 23 till August 23) has become a fixture in Colombo – an artistic lens through which to peep at the anti-Tamil violence of the annus horribilis 1983.
The passage of time has not effaced from his memory the searing images of terrible things when 40 years ago he walked the smoking charred lanes of Wellawatte and Colombo of a morning, a 23-year-old then a freelance artist at Wijeya Publications.
Later studying for his masters at Moscow he was to hear, with shock, on the Slavic nine o’clock news of the regular bombing and violence back home.
Chandragupta Thenuwara
This annual ‘ritual’ of an exhibition, he says, is a way of remembering and ensuring such things will not happen again.
This year named Delusion, the exhibition will look at the extremists who he says are ‘peeping out’ again after the Aragalaya period when democracy held sway at the Galle Face Green.
One strong dart is aimed at the government using the ICCPR to stifle free speech. But on the whole the exhibition probes into issues of “militarism, religious extremism, conspiracy theories, Sinhala chauvinism, narrow-minded nationalism, anti-western agitation, socialism”.
But why give it a name associated with the shrink’s couch? “Because we all seem to be suffering from delusions”- starting from the ones about racial superiority and religious extremism.
Barrelism, a concept he developed for the very first Black July exhibition in 1997, is central to the new exhibition. Barrels- symbols of barriers and conflict- appear in different guises- there are for example the camouflaged barrels which mean things remain unsolved though we assume the worst is over.
Crosswords are another form Chandragupta makes into cynical art. One puzzle has many a word like anti-creative, public, prison, fear and sacred, inner, robe- all spelling, in the middle, ICCPR.
Then there is the blackboard where words starting with mass form a puzzle, a play with words massive, mass, massacre and masquerade.
Delusion will coincide with two other exhibitions: Covert, a collection by Thenuwara which was partially exhibited at the 59th Venice Biennale and Frieze London 2022 in ‘Indra’s Net’ curated by Sandhini Poddar; also an exhibition by six students of Thenuwara, titled Fragile: to commemorate un-commemorative July 1983 to 2023.
Featuring two Sinhalese students – Devinda Gamage, Shanika Wijesinghe, two Tamils – T. Vinoja and U. Arulraj and two Muslims – M.T. Rukshana Fathima and Sabrina Fathim Zarook, Fragile plays on the same theme as Delusion.
Delusion will happen from July 23 till August 23 from 10 a.m. till 8 p.m. at the Saskia Fernando Gallery; Covert from July 23 till July 31 from 10 a.m. till 8 p.m. at the Lionel Wendt and Fragile from July 23 till July 31 at the JDA Perera Gallery, Horton Place, Colombo.
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