- Saskia and Annika Fernando on the Udayshanth Fernando Foundation
Sri Lankan art is as diverse as its people and its culture, and over the last four decades, one family has done a lot to further the cause of Sri Lankan art. This art movement began in 1987 when retailer, restaurateur, gallerist, and hotelier Udayshanth Fernando opened Paradise Road. Through the years, Paradise Road and Fernando’s other companies have disrupted Sri Lanka’s artistic, design, and retail landscape, while also giving a platform to Sri Lankan handicrafts and craftsmen.
His passion for art and design, as well as his personal taste and design sense, are locally and internationally renowned, and as both a personal collector and gallerist, Udayshanth has always shown a keen interest and passion for nurturing local art and artists. His daughters Annika and Saskia Fernando have also each gone on to build illustrious careers in art and design, with a special focus on developing and nurturing Sri Lankan art and design.
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Udayshanth Fernando[/caption]
Annika is the Owner, Curator, and Designer of PR, one of Colombo’s best-curated retail stores, featuring exclusivities, limited editions, established local and Indian designers, and new talent, combining modernity, originality, and quality to create a distinct spirit and style. Annika is also the Principal Interior Designer of her own design practice Annika Fernando Design.
Saskia is the Owner and Founder of the Saskia Fernando Gallery, and over the past decade has worked to create a sustainable structure for the Sri Lankan gallery scene, forming deep-rooted relationships with the artists she represents, launching an online platform for Paradise Road Galleries (formerly known as Art Space Sri Lanka), and numerous talk platforms aimed at different sectors of the community.
In their vision to further Sri Lanka’s art space, and especially against the backdrop of the pandemic, which has seen artists across Sri Lanka struggle to survive and create, Udayshanth, Annika, and Saskia have launched the Udayshanth Fernando Foundation (UFF) to promote and support Sri Lankan art and artists through funding initiatives, mentorship programme, and publication. The chief goal of the UFF is to continue to support the local art industry and promote it on an international scale. They have just completed the first stage of fundraising for their pilot project, Artists 4 Artists (A4A).
To mark the formal launch of the UFF, Brunch chatted with Annika and Saskia on their vision for the UFF and what it hopes to do.
A formal platform a long time in the making
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Annika Fernando[/caption]
The UFF, though officially created earlier this year, is the Paradise Road Group of Companies’ way of formalising their many years of work fostering Sri Lankan artists in a way that allows Udayshanth, Annika, and Saskia to create more impact. “My father has been supporting local emerging artists for decades now, in every way possible through mentoring, financial, exposure, upliftment, investment, promotion, and more,” Annika said. “The UFF is a way of formalising this support and extending it.”
Given the overlap between working with artists and her work through the Saskia Fernando and Paradise Road Galleries, Saskia takes on the chief role of facilitating the work of the UFF and explained that the decision to create a formal foundation came earlier this year when the Paradise Road Group decided to conduct A4A, a fundraiser to help emerging local artists create and produce art in the wake of the pandemic. As a registered non-profit, the UFF gives initiatives like A4A greater flexibility and transparency than conducting it through a commercial business or gallery would.
The UFF as a platform allows Udayshanth, Annika, and Saskia to continue their work to develop Sri Lanka’s art space and artists in a more powerful way. “Supporting, collecting, and manufacturing local is what Paradise Road has been doing since the 80s when it was established. Paradise Road, to this day, works with independent craftsmen to produce all products. There is no magical big Paradise Road factory,” Annika explained: “I don’t think the UFF will change how my father continues to work with people today at all, but it allows us, as his daughters, to strengthen that commitment he makes and give it a higher value.”
Artists 4 Artists and the UFF’s vision
With the UFF in its infancy, Saskia explained that while the overall vision of the UFF, which is seriously supporting and giving back to the contemporary art industry, is very clear, the specifics of how that vision will be achieved will change very much over the next few years as the UFF finds its feet.
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Saskia Fernando[/caption]
“My father has always been more focused on the support of younger artists, which is also what the UFF will focus on, via donations and loans to institutions, funding to younger artists, and publications,” Saskia said. Also sharing that while the forming of the UFF won’t affect how she, her father, and her sister work with artists at a base level, the formal structure of the UFF will help to document and amplify the impact they can have when working with artists, and this became clear with the first stage of the UFF’s A4A fundraising initiative.
A4A took shape in the form of raising funds through works donated by artists, although this took shape in a different format to typical fundraisers using donated artwork, with the work donated being sold as a limited edition of prints. In this way, the artist still keeps ownership of the work and the original art too. Saskia said this was an intentional move to allow artists to still profit off the work they donate in the long run as opposed to incurring a loss when they donate an original artwork to a noteworthy cause.
“It’s not easy being an artist in Sri Lanka, especially a young, emerging artist, because of lack of funding, which is why we didn’t want to ask artists to donate works of art, especially when making art is their livelihood,” Saskia explained, adding that she also wanted to move away from art being used to raise funds for other causes and instead focus on using art to raise money for art itself.
The limited edition prints sold as part of the A4A initiative were also sold at a more affordable price than the original artwork would have been sold, to allow a larger cross-section to donate to the cause by buying artwork and also giving them the chance to own a piece of work by their favourite artist that might otherwise be less affordable.
The UFF then held an open call for artists to pitch proposals for funding, which were evaluated by a panel that included Udayshanth, Annika, and Saskia as Directors of the UFF and also included eminent artists and creative personalities Christie’s India Director Sonal Singh, Groundviews Founder Dr. Sanjana Hattotuwa, and artist and archaeologist Prof. Jagath Weerasinghe. The panel received 27 proposals, which were shortlisted down to three artists: Randika de Silva, Lojithan Ram, and Aruni Dharmakirti, who will receive 12 months of funding to produce their art.
Wishing to keep the proposals made by these artists private until they are ready for showcase, Saskia did say that the three artists selected were all still in the very early stages of their respective careers and they have each put forth three very different proposals. Through A4A, these artists will also receive mentorship and support with things like workshop space and studio to allow them to be able to focus fully on their art.
The UFF and Sri Lankan Art
With the UFF having successfully embarked on its first project, we asked Annika and Saskia what their hopes are for the future. For Annika, growth is what she most looks forward to, sharing that her chief hope is that the UFF “grows in strength and evolves to be representative of more of our father’s passions; that it helps to support not only the local art industry but also the craft industry in whatever way it can, in a formal manner beyond what is done anyway behind the scenes every day.”
Saskia spoke about the Sri Lankan art space and how the UFF has been formed at a time when the Sri Lankan art space is due to experience a boom, and so, it stands a chance to help facilitate the creation of some powerful art. “The arts scene has naturally been affected by the pandemic, as have other industries and people, but I also think that, for artists, this time of reclusion, so to speak, has meant artists have come out of the pandemic with a certain silence that was in some cases needed to take their work to another level,” Saskia shared, adding: “I have experienced and observed that many artists have come out of this time with a sort of newfound inspiration after being away from all the noise, something which is often a challenge for artists to escape from. This is something the international art world has also experienced.”
The UFF being able to facilitate artists at such a time where artistic engagement is high is something that Saskia looks forward to being able to do, especially with the added structure the UFF will provide.
Udayshanth Fernando also commented on the setting up of the UFF, noting: “The purpose of the foundation in financially assisting artists at the outset has been a need in Sri Lanka,” and concluding with a quote by Thomas Gray: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.” 
