Colomboscope 2019; celebrating ocean through art!

By Divya Thotawatte

Colomboscope 2019, Sri Lanka’s premier interdisciplinary festival platform for contemporary arts, kicked off this Thursday celebrating the ocean through various creative masterpieces related to the theme.  

Natasha Ginwala

Festival Director, Puja Srivastava

Bringing together art lovers to Rio Complex on an international scale, Colomboscope displayed creations of some extremely talented local and international visual artists and musicians, as well as historians, authors, filmmakers, and performers doing their best to relate and depict this year’s theme ‘Sea Change’. Addressing the urgencies of a rapidly altering coastal line and maritime legacies, the festival is to host artistic works including filmmaking, music, culinary and olfactory creations as well as expert discussions and workshops for a week until 31 January. 

“In this festival edition, we bring together a large number of artists from South and South East Asia, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Thailand. There are also visual and performing artists of Sri Lankan descent from Switzerland and Australia exhibited alongside international cultural practitioners. We have come a long way since the first edition was held at Park Street Mews! A whole generation of contemporary artists and dialogue partners has been part of our growing festival community,” says Colomboscope 2019 Festival Director Puja Srivastava. 

Each piece of art showcased at the festival and every music and culinary experience gives out a message and relates a unique story regarding the maritime issues and activities of Sri Lanka, while also bringing out the creativity and originality of the artists. The featured artwork was carefully chosen to entertain art lovers and to raise awareness of the sensitive issues concerning the ocean through the voice of art. 

“What I want to resemble through my paintings is myself. The corals that look like dead rocks are actually alive and they do breathe just like other living beings. They have a life of their own,” says a young artist from Jaffna, Catharina Danial. Her paintings explore her psychological relationship with corals and reefs in Northern Sri Lanka while she recognises traits of herself within them and thus expects to help raise consciousness beyond visual observations of complex lifestyles, to the unseen ecosystems that surround us.  

Aesthetic pieces of visual art highlighting geographic details, displaced homes, and ecological devastation, as well as personal memories tracing the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka and several other coastlines in 2004, gives the festival an air of silent reverence for the ocean. Moreover, graphic arts focusing on unseen and ignored processes of urbanisation and film works like Bangladeshi filmmaker Molly Sagar’s creations dwelling upon pastoral lived realities and the rural sphere of Bangladesh are capable of attracting the attention of the visitors to more responsible and sensitive issues that affects the eco system of the ocean, maritime fisheries and even tourism as well. 

According to Colomboscope 2019 Curator Natasha Ginwala the festival exhibition includes the incessant loop of ‘instant’ images from tourist-fuelled fantasies investigated through the lens of privilege and racism. Rare photographs of the Maldives shot over three decades showcased at the festival brings to light vanished ways of communal life and oceanic diversity. “We still know less about the ocean floor than we do about the moon surface or planet Mars. ‘Sea Change’ addresses the urgencies of a rapidly altering coastline and the complex negotiations to be carried forward between islander communities, unfulfilled agendas of planetary coexistence, and capitalist ambition,” Ginwala says. 

Displaying creations of over 30 artists, filmmakers, musicians, and interdisciplinary thinkers Colomboscope 2019 led by Festival Works in collaboration with its founding partners EUNICSL (Goethe-Institut, British Council, and Alliance Française de Kotte) is an open forum for art lovers with creative ideas and a passion for nature.

   - Pix by Shehan Gunasekara