• In conversation with Sharmini Pereira and Sandev Handy of the MMCA

Art today, or contemporary art as one would call it, runs the gamut from the traditional to the unconventional, from the disruptive to the transformative. It holds the power of the more traditional or historical art, but because of its place in our present, can be more uncomfortable to come to terms with in the same way. 

This week, The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with curators of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka (MMCA) – Chief Curator Sharmini Pereira and Curator Sandev Handy – for a discussion on Sri Lankan contemporary art and the role of museums like the MMCA in collecting and preserving such art. 

Understanding contemporary art

Contemporary art, given that it is the art of our present time, is ever-evolving and includes a huge variety of mediums. It can often be difficult to understand what modern and contemporary art is, and here, Sharmini weighed in: “The easiest way to think of contemporary art is in terms of a historical timeline. Contemporary art is the art of artists who are still living or working today,” she said, expanding on contemporary art. 

As such, when preserving and showcasing contemporary art, this could mean the work of artists in their ’70s or ’80s who began practising in the 1950s and 1960s, up to younger artists just beginning to practise. 

Something that often overlaps with contemporary art, especially in terms of our general understanding, is modern art – the artistic movements and styles that emerged from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century – movements like impressionism, cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, and many others which characterised a departure from traditional art conventions and saw artists looking at things more conceptually and abstractly or in tandem with what we call modernisation. 

However, modern art and contemporary art do not necessarily mean the same thing. In very simple terms, modern art refers to the art movements and styles that emerged from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century whose creators may or may not still be living, whereas contemporary art refers to art created in the present time or the recent past that has been made by artists still living or working today.

As curators of the MMCA, Sharmini and Sandev deal with both modern and contemporary art. The MMCA’s second milestone exhibition, ‘Encounters,’ which concluded earlier this year saw the works of the prolific Sri Lankan modern artist George Keyt (1901-1993) installed in displays where they were interacting with the work of contemporary artists such as Pradeep Thalawatta, Janani Cooray, Susiman Nirmalavasan, A. Mark, and Nelun Harasgama, to create a dialogue around themes such as love and friendship, the family unit, the environment and the Afro-Asian Movement amongst other subjects. 

Contemporary art is very diverse in its mediums. 

“It is no longer your traditional paintings, sculpture, or even photography. It is a much more expanded field of practice which includes work like film (whether that is making videos with found footage or in a more traditional documentary style) or performance (not in terms of theatre, but in terms of using performance as a way of making art),” Sharmini said, noting that it was very difficult to limit contemporary art to a fixed definition when it came to medium, especially because new techniques and technologies emerged every day and were used by artists, even if the potential of those technologies and their impact on art could not yet be defined. 

The Sri Lankan contemporary art identity

Sri Lanka has a very rich artistic tradition. Throughout history, we can see it in traditional temple art and sculpture, through our traditional dance and performance, through traditional easel paintings after the practice was introduced by the British, and moving through to the modern and contemporary artists who defined modern Sri Lankan art in the mid-19th century – artists like George Keyt and the other members of the famed ’43 Group instituted by photographer Lionel Wendt as well as the huge community of contemporary artists defining and pushing the boundaries of Sri Lankan art today. 

But what are the key hallmarks of Sri Lankan contemporary art as a whole? It is, above all, multidisciplinary. 

“All art was once contemporary by virtue of the people making it in their time. An artist may have made work either by choice or by necessity, in response to their political, social, or economical environment or from the materials available to them at a particular moment in history and location.” 

Sandev added that the materials and mediums often defined the art identity of a certain time. Even in the case of photography and film, he shared that the MMCA’s current exhibition ‘The Foreigners’ showed a photo taken by Stephen Champion in 1991 using camera film next to a 2021 video work made by Sumudi Suraweera and Dinelka Liyanage made on a cellphone. The two works are 30 years apart but are still very much the work of contemporary artists responding to the mediums and materials available to them at the time of creating their art and the message they were trying to convey. 

The internet and social media have taken over how people consume information and artists are responding to that, even if they do not have access to expensive cameras, by using their phones to make videos, take photographs, even sketch and respond to the times they are living in. This doesn’t mean that other mediums take second stage. 

“You now have artists exploring a multiplicity of ways. For example, you have artists using photocopy machines to make artwork as much as you have those using oil paint or other traditional paint mediums.”

One other hallmark of Sri Lankan contemporary art that Sandev pointed out was performance art. “Sri Lanka has quite a rich history of performance and we can see contemporary performance art as an extension of that, where artists might use their bodies to move through a particular space and make a statement, to protest or invite reflection. One way that Sri Lankan art came to differentiate itself in the early 1990s and 2000s is through performance work,” he explained.

Sharmini also shared her thoughts on the contemporary art scene in Sri Lanka, noting that at present, she found much of our present contemporary art rooted in responding to Sri Lanka’s current circumstances and events. 

Of course, Sri Lanka’s current circumstances and events these last few years have been unprecedented and it is natural that artists will respond to them, but this approach has its strengths and its weaknesses. For example, while this makes the art very powerful to local audiences, at the same time this becomes less so to an international audience.

She also shared that much of Sri Lankan contemporary was sales-driven in terms of practice, which could leave much of it feeling quite traditional and safe as opposed to pushing boundaries.

“The scale of the work is quite uniform. It is work that can be purchased. Video-based work is growing but in a slow manner. Access to making film and video is costly, though it no longer requires high production budgets. Notably, there is no market as yet for collecting video. 

“There is also a long legacy of work that relates to the war, in which personal stories and experiences predominate. This work has a special place in Sri Lankan art history, both during and post-war. Over the last seven years, a more diverse range of artists have started to emerge. Alternative narratives that eschew the painterly expressionism of the ’90s has given rise to a new wave of practices that are not centred in Colombo but are islandwide and international.”

Preserving modern and contemporary art

The MMCA opened in late 2019 with its maiden exhibition ‘One Hundred Thousand Small Tales,’ a curated exhibition of work by 55 modern and contemporary artists. Its core mission was that of all museums – to collect and preserve art, in this case, modern and contemporary art. But why specifically build a museum for modern and contemporary art? 

“We don’t have a museum for modern and contemporary art in Sri Lanka and we need one,” Sharmini shared. “A museum is more than a building, especially today. From an artist’s perspective, it is important to have one because contemporary artists are by and large working with subjects that are thornier issues that can shed light on difficult discussions and museums, if they are brave, should accommodate this and contribute to wider discussions happening through public programmes and positioning contemporary artists as important commentators of the society we live in.” 

Museums also play a role in how these conversations take place, with Sharmini sharing that from its inception, the MMCA was firmly committed to creating an inclusive space for understanding modern and contemporary art and implemented this by being trilingual across the board, from the descriptions explaining the work to the public programmes the MMCA implemented and its messaging on social media. 

This push for inclusivity has received a lot of traction, with Sharmini noting that this inclusivity in language was now starting to be more widely built into the Sri Lankan art scene and that the MMCA was proud to have driven such a movement. 

Furthering modern and contemporary artists as social commentators and modern and contemporary art as a channel to understand contemporary situations, the MMCA has conducted over 200 public programmes such as events, talks, and workshops and staged three milestone exhibitions. 

Its most recent exhibition – ‘The Foreigners’ – opened in May and exclusively features contemporary artists responding to the theme of what it means to be a foreigner, be it a traditional foreigner passing through Sri Lanka, the feeling of foreignness that comes with being a Sri Lankan born and belonging to two cultures, or the foreignness of being a Sri Lankan migrant in a foreign land. 

Since 2019, part of the MMCA’s Public Programmes extends to building a network of over 150 teachers to better foster the understanding of modern and contemporary art across schools, universities, and private institutions, as well as the MMCA’s Visitor Educator Programme – an initiative to dismantle barriers to the space of the MMCA and demystify contemporary art. The Visitor Educator Programme has employed over 80 educators and counting, many of whom have gone on to work in other fields in art and grow in many directions. 

Beyond that, Sharmini also explained that from the turn of the 20th century, there was a vast history of art that had been made, from which we could see the development of modern art taking shape. This period of history needs to be looked at from a museum context and preserved as a collection of work that looks at this part of Sri Lanka’s history. 

A museum like the MMCA also improves the cultural offering of Colombo for engaged and independent foreign tourists in the city as well as for those in Colombo (and Sri Lanka) who have an interest in modern and contemporary art but lack a space that allows them to explore or discover such an interest. 

The MMCA’s second milestone exhibition ‘Encounters’ attracted over 21,500 people, despite taking place in 2022 on the back of the pandemic and during Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, showing that there is a strong base for museum-going people that can be built within Colombo.

The MMCA has also grown to include a core team of 10 full-time staff, a group working closely on implementing the different functions of a museum, from curatorial work in all its capacities to exhibition design to crafting and implementing public programmes, to the operational side of managing a museum to fundraising to press and marketing.

Speaking on a museum for modern and contemporary art versus the more traditional view of historical museums with historical artefacts, Sandev shared that artworks and cultural artefacts could be considered one and the same, and so, there was a responsibility to collect and preserve modern and contemporary artefacts too. 

“It is through artefacts in a museum that we learn about a particular context, social situation, or environment. Making artefacts is not a practice that has stopped by any means. Artists and practitioners are making artefacts – objects that are representative, critical of, and reflective of current conversations and situations. We only have to look at the events of 2022 to understand that there are historically important moments happening throughout the country and our everyday lives. 

“We then need to ask what it looks like to acknowledge those cultural artefacts that help us learn about those moments, those histories, and current politics and conversations going on. Why does that learning have to be something that is relegated to a particular point in history? That is why museums like the MMCA are important – to have a moment and place to reflect not simply on the ancient historical, but the historical that is present; the history that is ongoing.” 

For more on the MMCA, its exhibitions, programmes, and work, visit: https://mmca-srilanka.org/