Chandraguptha Thenuwara Sri Lankan , b. 1960

This July, Chandraguptha Thenuwara presents his annual memorial exhibition Meta-Real, offering a distant contemplation of the socio-political developments in the decades following the anti-Tamil pogrom and the 1980s JVP insurrection.

A monumental column, Chandraguptha Thenuwara's Covert (2021-23) is composed of intricate and interlocking iron filigree symbols painted black: lotus buds, bodies, barbed wire, thorns, stupas, lion tails, weapons, vehicles. Exhibited at the Venice Biennale last year, it travelled to Colombo's Lionel Wendt Art Gallery in 2023, where a new floor sculpture sprouts out from its base like tree roots. The installation marks Thenuwara's annual memorial show dedicated to Black July, the anti-Tamil pogrom at the start of Sri Lanka's civil war (1983-2009), exactly forty years ago.

Delusion presents Thenuwara’s annual exhibition of new works in response to the sociopolitical climate in Sri Lanka. The exhibition will continue his inquiry into issues of militarism, religious extremism, conspiracy theories, Sinhala chauvinism, narrow-minded nationalism, anti-western agitation, socialism etc.