A year ago, Lankans bid farewell to veteran Sri Lankan designer, artist, colourist, entrepreneur, and writer Kala Suri Barbara Sansoni-Lewcock, also known as Barbara Sansoni.
One of those rare creative minds that shaped generations of Sri Lankans, Sansoni was known across many sectors for her works in architecture, textile designs, and hand-woven panels. Most famously, she founded Barefoot, the textile company that redefined handloom textiles in the 1960s-’70s and is often credited with redefining the concept of colour in Sri Lanka, empowering women weavers, and transforming several national cottage industries through Barefoot and her other projects.
Now, a year after her passing on 23 April 2022, the Barefoot Gallery Colombo is hosting ‘Hang a little landscape colour: Barbara Sansoni – A Retrospective 2023’ – an exhibition that looks back at some of her original work over the decades.
In the catalogue describing the exhibition, Barefoot CEO (and Sansoni’s son) Dominic Sansoni wrote: “This exhibition is to celebrate the work of my mother, Barbara Sansoni. Our home was her workshop and studio. She was interested in many different things; architecture, colour, travel, and design. She had a love for true sophistication, a well-turned clay pot, or fine beeralu lace.
“She was proud of the island she loved and celebrated its people, landscape, colour, architecture, and of course, its sense of humour. As family, we were all part of this journey – the conversations around a table, storytelling friends, excursions to find a house she knew must be there, regular visits to the Government yarn depot after school to buy her allocated bundles of colour.”
The woman behind Barefoot
Sansoni was born on 22 April 1928 in Kandy and showed an early interest in art and an intense love for colour. Living and travelling in South Asia also exposed her to the abundantly colourful ways of life that make up the South Asian identity.
An artist and writer, Sansoni also worked as a journalist and essayist in the 1960s, going on to publish several books later in her life.
Barefoot, the business and brand Sansoni would ultimately devote most of her life to nurturing, began in the early 1960s when a family friend, the Mother Good Counsel of the Sisters of the Order of the Good Shepherd, asked her to design cloth for the weaving centres they supported.
Inspired by the principles and intricacies of weaving, Sansoni soon found ways to express her unique style and sense of colour through handloom textiles. This style, what would come to be known simply as the Barefoot style – simple rectilinear proportions inspired by everything from land and seascapes, plants and animals, and ancient art – became very popular in Colombo, sowing the seeds for the Barefoot brand.
Today, Barefoot’s flagship store in Colombo which includes a shop, art gallery, bookshop, and courtyard cafe forms a tranquil, creative oasis of colour and life in the heart of Colombo, blending what Sansoni held most dear – vivid colour, good design, incredible art, and delightful music.
The retrospective’s look at Sansoni’s work
The Sunday Morning Brunch reached out to Nelun Harasgama, one of the curators of ‘Hang a little landscape colour: Barbara Sansoni – A Retrospective 2023’ for some insight on the process of building a retrospective of such a vibrant personality.
“The designers [of Barefoot] were the curators,” Harasgama explained, adding that following Sansoni’s death last year, her family had felt that it was important to showcase some of her original work. “When we were choosing work, we chose things that were completely different from one another. For example, if she had done four or five fabric walls in the 1970s, we chose one wall.”
This look through all of Sansoni’s work (throughout her life, Sansoni carried a large notebook everywhere and used it all the time to record and comment on anything that caught her attention – from her thoughts to inspirations for designs, plays on proportion and colour and even shopping lists) offered a huge resource of material to choose from, in addition to all the publicly known work she had developed through Barefoot over the years.
And each piece of work was unique. As Harasgama shared: “Barbara was a diverse artist. She was not just a fabric designer. She is maybe one of the only designers I knew who also wrote poetry, prose, and children’s books. Who drew and painted abstract and figurative art. She was an artist and foremost.”
The retrospective above all captures the diversity of Sansoni’s work. And of course, her love of colour.
The retrospective
Spread across both levels of the Barefoot Gallery Colombo, the exhibition captures the incredible breadth of Sansoni’s work. From line drawings of buildings around Sri Lanka with incredible architectural insight and accuracy to creative paintings and photographs by Sansoni to pages of her notebooks on display, the exhibition gives you a glimpse into the mind of a one-of-a-kind creative visionary.
The upper level of the exhibition provides a deeper look into Sansoni’s work with Barefoot itself – from colour wheels she developed for Barefoot to some of Barefoot’s more iconic pieces, and of course, more samples from her collection of notebooks.
Speaking on the importance of the exhibition, Harasgama said: “Barbara’s work is very eclectic and the exhibition gathers her work from all over Sri Lanka,” stressing that the exhibition was something that all Sri Lankans should see, especially those who were creative and valued creativity.
‘Hang a little landscape colour: Barbara Sansoni – A Retrospective 2023’ will remain on display at the Barefoot Gallery Colombo until 28 May and can be viewed between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Monday to Saturday.
A curator’s tour of the exhibition will be held on Wednesday (24) at 5.30 p.m. For more information or to register, contact the Barefoot Gallery Colombo on +94 77 025 5470.