• Sound, memory, and ritual at Colpetty Town House for Colomboscope 2026

Every other January, Colomboscope reshapes how contemporary art sits within Colombo. This week, the art festival returns with Rhythm Alliances, an edition grounded in sound, movement, memory, and repetition as lived structures rather than abstract ideas. 

Curated by Hajra Haider Karrar, with artistic direction by Natasha Ginwala, the programme unfolds across the city through performances, exhibitions, and listening spaces. 

At its heart sits one of the festival’s most compelling exhibition venues, the Colpetty Town House. Titled Frequencies of Passage, the exhibition occupies a three storey repurposed home on Duplication Road, once a multi generational residence. 

This is the first time the house has been used as a Colomboscope venue, and its domestic past shapes the experience from the moment visitors step inside. 

Colomboscope Curator Karrar described the site as one that “evokes reflective and immersive spaces in sometimes domestic settings that recount ancestral and spiritual journeys, and inherited legacies across geographies”. 

She noted that the works engaged with “remembrance, ritual, and trauma” through sound, textiles, video, and scores, adding that the townhouse became “a fitting site to host these narratives as a space that carries generational history and has witnessed many transformations over time”.

The broader rhythm of the festival frames this approach. Ginwala explained that this edition “foregrounds rhythm as an essential character of cultural life, social cohesion, and diverse civic histories and sonic pathways”. 

She described rhythm as a field for “mapping dissent, healing, and renewal,” reminding us that “all life begins and ends with rhythm” and that these patterns flow into a larger universal story.

Ahead of Colomboscope’s opening on Thursday (22), The Sunday Morning Brunch reached out to some of the artists showcasing within the Frequencies of Passage exhibition at the Colpetty Town House for more on the thinking behind the venue and what kind of work to expect. 

The works as a whole move between the domestic and the political, the intimate and the collective. Archival material, soundscapes, and interactive media trace migration, labour, belief, and care. Themes of matrilineal inheritance, ritual percussion, play, and memory recur across floors, creating a quiet but insistent coherence.

Mahesha Kariyapperuma’s ceiling-fixed installation asks visitors to physically reorient themselves. Her work begins on the ground, where viewers lie on an illustrated circular rug, and extends upwards to a ceiling piece titled ‘The Eye,’ made of digitally printed cotton fabric and metal. Drawing from Sinhalese Buddhist life in rural Kandy, the work visualises a worldview shaped by the drum. 

“The drum was often the connector that connected the physical and the spiritual realm,” Kariyapperuma said. She described the piece as an attempt to make a soundscape that emphasised the ritual dimension of drumming that had been flattened by tourism and spectacle. The house, she felt, supported this pacing. “The installations invite the guests to sit down and relax. The house atmosphere fuels that feeling.”

Sabeen Omar’s suspended textile works extend this sense of intimacy. Made from discarded domestic fabrics dipped in gesso, painted, cut, stitched, and reworked, they hang vertically like soft architectural forms. 

Omar spoke of her interest in “the shift that happens when objects move from being loved and used to being left behind”. Exhibiting within a former home sharpened that dialogue. “Both carry traces of use and intimacy, and both exist in a moment of transition,” she said. A sound piece layered with recordings of her mother, grandmother, and son carries rhythm across generations, reinforcing repetition as care.

On the ground floor, Chamindika Abeysinghe introduces rhythm through interaction. His pixel art game ‘Taala’ draws from the soundscape of a Sri Lankan village, blending traditional instruments, ritual, and fantasy. Designed as an exploratory experience rather than a task-driven game, Abeysinghe hoped visitors would encounter it “similar to a painting or a song that can be explored virtually”.

Taken together, the Colpetty Town House exhibition offers one of the most inviting entry points into Colomboscope 2026. It does not rush or instruct. It listens, holds, and waits. In a festival shaped by rhythm, this house becomes a place to feel it.

Info box

Colomboscope takes place from 21 to 31 January across multiple venues in Colombo. 

Exhibitions and events unfold at Barefoot Gallery, Colpetty Town House, Radicle Gallery, Rio Complex, Soul Studio, Musicmatters, Liberty by Scope Cinemas, Kamatha at BMICH, and CoCA Art. 

Most exhibitions are free and open to the public, with selected performances, workshops, and talks requiring prior registration. For more information or to register, visit www.colomboscope.lk.