"Lifeboat 1, 2, 3"
"Theertha International Artists Workshop - 2001",
Lunaganga, Sri Lanka, Sep, 2001.
1. Earthwork
2. Earthwork
3. Performance
There were two earthworks before i did the performance "Lifeboat 3" evolved as a performance based on my series of work, "Journey of a yellow man", in which I paint my body from head to foot in bright yellow paint. Exaggerating and parodying the Orientalist's symbol of ethnicity. At the same time in the context of the performance, I sought to break free from narrow stereotype perception of identity.
Sri Lanka once was a land of imaginative aspirations and enchantment is now in a state of collective paranoia, sharpened by ethnic and intensified economic and social conflicts. The performance itself seeks to reconcile my personal contradictions with that of the desperate and critical social reality I found there.
Besides this there was the climatic condition of drought, which resulted in power cuts at unexpected time of the day due to the prevalent civil strife. In Lunaganga estate I found two dried up ponds where I decided to make lifeboats out of the mud there. It created a fragile image of irony when I filled them up with water, so that the water filled boat appeared to be floating on mud.
On the “Critical dialogue day”, when the workshop was opened to the public I decided to make a performance that began from another performance which the local artists were collaborating in a patch of cinnamon trees. The cinnamon barks were spices, which the colonialists exploited slave labor to produce for export in Sri Lanka’s history. I walked around their performance, carrying a bundle of cinnamon sticks already stripped off their barks. At the end of their performance, I continued with my performance improvising around my mud lifeboat. I opened up the bundle of cinnamon sticks, which I had tied together like a trail of railroad track; a reminder to the introduction of train travel by Sri Lanka’s past colonial imperialists. Making a procession with the cinnamon sticks “train tracks”, trailing me, I moved on towards the lake where I had anchored a small floating island. Upon reaching it I tied the cinnamon “train tracks” to the island and laid over it like a desperate man on a tiny “lifeboat” of an island.
"Theertha International Artists Workshop - 2001",
Lunaganga, Sri Lanka, Sep, 2001.
1. Earthwork
2. Earthwork
3. Performance
There were two earthworks before i did the performance "Lifeboat 3" evolved as a performance based on my series of work, "Journey of a yellow man", in which I paint my body from head to foot in bright yellow paint. Exaggerating and parodying the Orientalist's symbol of ethnicity. At the same time in the context of the performance, I sought to break free from narrow stereotype perception of identity.
Sri Lanka once was a land of imaginative aspirations and enchantment is now in a state of collective paranoia, sharpened by ethnic and intensified economic and social conflicts. The performance itself seeks to reconcile my personal contradictions with that of the desperate and critical social reality I found there.
Besides this there was the climatic condition of drought, which resulted in power cuts at unexpected time of the day due to the prevalent civil strife. In Lunaganga estate I found two dried up ponds where I decided to make lifeboats out of the mud there. It created a fragile image of irony when I filled them up with water, so that the water filled boat appeared to be floating on mud.
On the “Critical dialogue day”, when the workshop was opened to the public I decided to make a performance that began from another performance which the local artists were collaborating in a patch of cinnamon trees. The cinnamon barks were spices, which the colonialists exploited slave labor to produce for export in Sri Lanka’s history. I walked around their performance, carrying a bundle of cinnamon sticks already stripped off their barks. At the end of their performance, I continued with my performance improvising around my mud lifeboat. I opened up the bundle of cinnamon sticks, which I had tied together like a trail of railroad track; a reminder to the introduction of train travel by Sri Lanka’s past colonial imperialists. Making a procession with the cinnamon sticks “train tracks”, trailing me, I moved on towards the lake where I had anchored a small floating island. Upon reaching it I tied the cinnamon “train tracks” to the island and laid over it like a desperate man on a tiny “lifeboat” of an island.