By Saskia Fernando Gallery will be presenting Chandraguptha Thenuwara’s annual memorial exhibition, Meta-Real.
Acting as a bridge between the past and the present, Meta-Real offers a distant contemplation of the socio-political developments of the nation since the 1980s. Coinciding with the anniversary of the 1983 Anti-Tamil pogrom on July 23rd, the exhibition continues the artist’s inquiry into the socio-political and cultural landscape of Sri Lanka.
The exhibition prompts viewers to contemplate unresolved issues that have persisted for four decades and the implications they could have for the democratic future of the country.
“IT WAS decades ago years ago, but Chandraguptha Thenuwara still remembers the group of men stopping the bus in Colombo and clambering on. They went from passenger to passenger, insisting that he or she say the Sinhalese words for pen and bucket— ‘pena’ and ‘baldiya’. Tamil tongues would contort around these syllables, making it easy for the assailants to distinguish one Sri Lankan ethnic community from another. Thenuwara, who is Sinhalese, was passed over. Others who struggled with the pronunciation were dragged off the bus to meet uncertain ends. The vehicle was waved on.
