Semi-Autobiographical (2025)

Guest-curated for the Ceylon Literary and Arts Festival 2025

17-19 January 2025

9.30 am-5:30 pm

at the Newspaper Room of the Colombo Public Library

In literature, an ‘autobiography’ refers to a life lived and told by the same person. Autobiography as a genre can reveal, confess, expose, conceal, and blur. This exhibition extends the popular literary genre of autobiography to visual art and explores the nuances of the autobiographical in the practices of 16 visual artists of Sri Lankan origin. The artworks on view raise the following questions: What stories from their personal lives do artists hold dear? How do they tell these stories using visual language? What role does memory play? Where does reality end and fiction begin?

As you walk through the exhibition, you will come across instances where the artists have portrayed their real selves or a fictional version of themselves, or where they respond to an intense relationship with a loved one or record a historical moment’s impact on themselves, or where they are almost absent in an abstract canvas of shapes. It is an attempt at understanding the myriad ways that the personal can become political.

The exhibition included works by Anoli Perera, Aruni Dharmakirthi, Ayesha Dharmathilaka, Chathurika Jayani, Lojithan Ram, Mayantha Perera, Nimna Wickramasinghe, Sabeen Omar, Safiya Sideek, Sandeepa Vithanage, Senali Nihara Cooray, Shanaka Kulathunga, Shyama Golden, Sophia Sansoni, T. Krishnapriya, and Thisath Thoradeniya

The exhibition publication can be viewed here.