Art exchange through registered post

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

- Ben Okri

Today, I set out to discuss what I would like to term as an art exhibition between the covers of a book, which has a special appeal particularly due to the very ‘readable’ narrative that unravels from within.

The One Year Drawing Project: May 2005 – October 2007, published in 2008 by Raking Leaves, brings together an interlinked and continuing sequence of art works by artists Muhanned Cader, Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, and Jagath Weerasinghe.

Edited by Sharmini Pereira, it is a chain of letters (artworks) that were posted between each artist, originating from four initial drawings, and continuing as replies to each of them, by the next artist who was designated to receive the artwork.

The chain continued until each of the four artists exchanged 52 drawings with each other, through the postal system, in a continuous sequence of 29 months, across the cities of Colombo and Jaffna.

The cover which is designed as an envelope, reminds one how each of the artworks would have reached the artists - A4 size paper, encased in such covers.

Visual artists

The entity of 208 drawings with even the slightest markings on them very clearly visible, due to the high quality printing of the book, leaves one with the impression that the these are the original artworks, themselves. The effect thereby created is of a personal discussion with the artists who are themselves engaged in a question answer sequence.

As four male visual artists collaborate on a virtually year long project to create and communicate through conventional mail, their personal feelings and emotions, it is a wonderfully engaging document that is produced through the chronological presentation of the entire effort.

It has produced a very ‘readable’ book that keeps one continuously turning pages to see the reaction of one artist to another as well as going back to an earlier page to recapture the essence of an art work in relation to a later elaboration.

Furthermore the storyline that is unravelled is one of continuous and progressive development. It is almost as if the reader is suddenly thrust in to middle of an ongoing discussion among these artists.

This book is a unique venture in that it brings together four artists of prominence in the contemporary Sri Lankan art scene and leaves them to speak for themselves. A sparse timeline which is actually a separate piece that can be easily and without damage, be removed from the entity that forms the book, is the only supplementary text (use of words), in the book.

The rest is all visuals. It is a wonderful ‘read’, of the highly personal, humourous, sarcastic, ironic, boredom related, wishful thinking – a range of emotions and inner workings of the artists minds that gives the outsider the impression at points, of being a silent observer, without the knowledge of the artists, into their personal lives.

Geometrical shape

The feminine form, if it ever appears, is subdued and left in the background, as the utterly masculine personal statements of the artists become more and more vivid and varied, as the artists get comfortable with the strictly defined parameters of the project, where they break free and engage in much discussion.

When considering the four artists, in a larger canon of their style and presentation outside this volume, Muhanned Cader, is at an advantage as the comparatively small size of paper is generally a size that he works within.

Choosing a certain geometrical shape which he successfully adapts in to various forms as necessary as the book progresses, its powerful presence within the one year project is felt as it invades the territories of the other artists too, as they venture in to humourous or caricaturized depiction of ideas through its usage.

The mathematical precision of some of the works and the parody of the female figure through this image, are particularly interesting.

Animal figures

Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan on the other hand takes the human figure as his subject matter. Starting with the leg, hand, eye, heart, the male body as a whole, with a range of emotions such as, pain, anguish, and distress, on the one hand and animal figures and other objects such as the violently placed heater, the water tap like forms issuing forth from the body, and the bitten hand are used to depict a comparatively violent disposition among the other artworks.

Particularly noteworthy are the eye which forms the image of the flame as a sward and the body with the dismembered head and a separate strip that illustrates the food digestion system of the body.

Within the context of the book, Jagath Weerasinghe marks the use of language, particularly Sinhala words, in a keenly emotion generating context, also forming part of the entity that creates the drawings or sketch. The line from a popular song ‘Mata aloke genedevi’ is wonderfully rich in suggestions and explores a range of emotions steeped in nostalgia.

Chandragupta Thenuwara, works on extensions of his themes used in other contemporary exhibitions of his, as well as doing a parody of fellow artists works that he receive in the course of this project.

[email protected]

..................................

<< Artscope Main Page