The New Indian Express ·
Where Two Worlds Meet
What does a child’s bedtime story have to do with images of war? In Sri Lankan artist Pradeep Thalawatta’s works, the two exist side by side, showing how images of conflict can travel across borders and become part of everyday life, even for those far from where the violence takes place.
This idea lies at the heart of ‘Between Dust and Distant Skies’, Thalawatta's solo exhibition, currently on view at Latitude 28 in Delhi. Curated by Rahul Kumar, the show features painting, drawing, photography and material-based works developed over around eight months of conversations and exchanges between Thalawatta and Kumar.
When the 2022 anti-government protests broke out in Sri Lanka, Thalawatta was also present at the protest site in Colombo, where people from across the country had gathered amid the economic crisis. The experience then found its way into some of his works.
On the other hand, with this exhibition, he says, he started looking beyond the protest itself and at the relationship between his family life and events happening around the world.
His experience of being a father became another way of looking at conflict and displacement.
This idea is visible throughout the exhibition. Children's toys, stickers, storybooks, wrapping paper and other objects from his daughter's everyday life are placed alongside images of war, displacement and loss. The familiar objects of childhood are thus brought into conversation with events that may be happening thousands of kilometres away.
In one work, Thalawatta uses his daughter's bedtime storybook as a surface. A silhouette —representing his daughter — is placed within the scene, while an aircraft appears elsewhere in the composition. The work brings together two very different realities — a child sleeping safely at home and the presence of aircraft associated with conflict.
Thalawatta tries to put the impact of conflict into his visual work, trying to connect and make sense of these worlds together.
For curator Rahul Kumar, this coming together of distant events and everyday experiences is an important aspect of the exhibition. In his curatorial note, he writes: “Photographs of conflict, migration, celebration, disaster, and everyday life circulate endlessly across newspapers, television screens, and digital feeds, dissolving geographical boundaries as they enter the private spaces of our homes. They are consumed alongside family photographs, children's books, advertisements, and personal archives…”
The result, Kumar suggests, is that the boundary between what people experience directly and what they encounter through images can begin to blur.
The artist uses materials that reinforce this concept of accumulated memory.
Used sandpaper collected from construction sites is an important part of several works. The material contains dust, pigment and marks left behind from its previous use. The artist notes, the sandpaper therefore already contains another “history” before he uses it.
He says, the work brings together histories that belong to others and, in doing so, creates a shared history.
One series, ‘Things We Could Never Wrap’, uses children's wrapping paper as a background for silhouettes of children affected by war. The images for these silhouettes were taken from newspapers and social media.Thalawatta turns the photographs into silhouettes using melted tar and then pastes them onto wrapping paper.
The contrast between the bright, playful material and images of children affected by violence is deliberate. Wrapping paper is associated with gifts, celebration and childhood, while the silhouettes point towards children who have lost parents, friends or belongings during conflict.
The artist's use of children's objects is also connected to his own relationship with his daughter. He said that after becoming a father, her toys, mug, comb, wrapping paper and other belongings naturally became part of his surroundings and hence, entered his work.
On the other hand, another work, titled ‘The World She Sees, The World I Carry’, features a grand mansion set against a pink and blue sky, with clouds floating above, creating a dreamy and almost magical scene. Over this image, Thalawatta has depicted another world in stark white — one of warplanes and building rubble scattered along the sides of a road. The contrast perhaps reflects the hopeful and charming world seen by the artist’s daughter, while he remains unable to look away from the harsh realities of conflict.
The artist's own experience of conflict also influences this way of observation. Sri Lanka went through years of civil war, and Thalawatta says he spent around 10 years working as a university teacher in the northern part of the country. He witnessed the effects of the war and its aftermath while working with people who had lived through it.
He also recalled studying in Lahore, Pakistan, where he encountered repeated television reports of Taliban’s attacks in Afghanistan. The experience made him aware of how news of conflict can become part of a person's daily routine even when they are not directly involved.
Today, the constant circulation of images has intensified that experience, he notes. News that was once watched at fixed times on television can now be encountered throughout the day on social media, YouTube and digital news platforms.
The artist says, repeated exposure does not necessarily mean that people consciously try to imagine what is happening to those caught in a conflict. Instead, new images can connect with memories that people already carry — making them memorise their “whole baggage”.
For Thalawatta, the works are, all in all, a response to what he sees and hears around him.
“My whole this series... it's about how I see things, how I hear things, and how my reaction towards that whole hearing and seeing,” he tells TMS.
‘Between Dust and Distant Skies’ does not focus only on people living through war; it asks what happens to those who encounter conflict repeatedly through images, and how those images slowly become part of the world outside.