Mediated: Asvajit Boyle, Ameena Hussein, Iromi Perera, Mika Tennekoon, Asanga Welikala, Jagath Weerasinghe, Anushka Wijesinha, Sunela Jayawardena
Four individuals – a researcher, an economist, a constitutional theorist and an award winning novelist – were invited to give submissions that were anchored to issues vital to a greater and deeper social and political understanding of Sri Lanka today. Four artists were invited to engage with this primary resource material and interpret it so that it through what they produced, attention was focused on the inconvenient, critical engagement expanded and public apathy challenged.
The subversive element to Mediated stems precisely from an aesthetic that is hopefully, to most who will frequent the gallery, pleasing. Like that famous photo from Vietnam of the naked girl child running away from napalm, an aesthetic carries its own power to question, unsettle and critique. Through the art of Mediated and its source material, I hope you are compelled to ask why, and perhaps, as George Bernard Shaw would venture to suggest, see things that never were and ask why not.
I believe the answers, and there isn’t just one, will enrich us all.
Sanjana Hattotuwa
