Social critique through art
Mune is a maverick artist in every sense of the word. After 40 years, his work will be on exhibit at the Alliance Francaise de Colombo from April 3-10.
I met him in Kurunegala in his new home, where he had moved to after his art sanctuary – the Shrubbery – close to Kurunegala town went into oblivion due to vandalism and threats. His entire being breathes an anti-establishment and anti-capitalist philosophy. Last month when he suffered two heart-attacks and a stroke he refused to be admitted to private hospitals.
Over a cup of black coffee and vandu appa, he reminisces about his life as a commercial sign board painter.
Charting his own path: Mune in Kurunegala and right, his earlier home
He had a natural talent for painting letters, shapes and designs across scales. Those who recognized his talents asked him to paint their shop signs and he went on secure contracts for corporations like Coca Cola and John Player cigarettes. He says his largest sign was a wall 50 feet wide. He has painted cinema posters and film cut-outs, carefully drawing grids and replicating giant bill-boards announcing the next blockbuster.
When he gave up his commercial sign-board painting in favour of painting as a medium of self-expression and social critique, his art came to represent a unique and dynamic expressionism. Elements of his commercial sign-painting found its way into his later works too. Featherless scrawny chickens mock the fast-food culture and paralysis of society through multi-corporations.
A major film-buff and a big fan of street-dramas, in the 1980s under the guidance of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray he studied Bengali and commercial film-making. On his bed is the Sinhala translation of Marx- Engels while an image of Stalin looks over him in his new abode. In true maverick fashion he paints on everything he lays his hands on. At one exhibition he painted on a series of rubber slippers and asked the visitors who needed slippers to wear them and take them home. His art work is hard-hitting and emotionally-charged, while politically oriented. A mixed media artwork from 2017 featuring two broken crutches held together in multiple places with cloth pieces is titled ‘Current Economic crisis in Sri Lanka’. He has even painted on a coconut scraper and toilet seats.
‘Childhood memories’: one of his works and left, ‘Sri Lanka’s Economy’
‘Mune is not dead yet’ was the title of his exhibition in 2022 at the entrance to Kurunegala cemetery, the title reminiscent of a statement by Frederich Nietzsche on the collapse of Western civilization that he believed to be propped up by the belief in a Christian God. Mune’s reflections on death also probably are connected to his apprenticeship with an undertaker as a young boy, but provides a potent reminder of the impermanence and absurdity of life.
Other art work feature artistic decorations of funeral posters of his friends. In the 1980s he had exhibited alongside Senaka Senanayake at the Lanka Oberoi, but the two of them took very different paths in their professional lives. In 2014 his work was exhibited at Gallery 59, Paris.
Mune’s galleries are the river bunds or the cemetery or bus stands. He says “for all of my exhibitions we have always given rice and curry and tea.”
While his work is not well-known in the Colombo art circles, he has always wanted his work to engage with the ordinary person. Hundreds of visitors, not the usual ‘art gallery’ goers, flocked to see his art by the cemetery or on Ibbagala rock, near Kurunegala. They are also intrigued by the artworks hanging from branches, brightly coloured sculptures made from waste material.
Mune represents a generation of ‘‘artists who remember- artists who narrate”. That is also the title of a book by Sasanka Perera which explores memory and representation in Sri Lankan visual arts ‘The dialectic of personal and political underpins the art scene in Sri Lanka’. He was one of the lucky ones who survived the terrors of the 1970s insurrections, particularly given his explicit politics. But he survives not just to bear witness to history but to make us stop and question the destruction we are causing to the environment and the future we are handing over to the next generation.
Mune’s work will be on exhibit at the Alliance Francaise de Colombo from April 3-10.
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