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Trauma-Stigmata: Symptomizing the Imaginary Response to the Memories of the Past, Its Traces and Repetitions.

This exhibition brings together Dumith Kulasekar's paintings created between 2012 and 2023 in two different locations; New York City in the USA during 2012-2014, and two studios in Sri Lanka. The exhibition is presented as a self-curated project emphasising the terminological meaning; curating as caring for something that has different values concerning different contexts.  The self-curation emphasises the integrity of studio research with a post-studio research context where a specific context is regenerated or allows emerging through the way of contextualising the works within a particular material space. In this sense, self-curation is again a political and poetical potential act within the so-called contemporary (institutionalised) art practice.



This exhibition is titled Trauma-Stigmata and has emerged from more than fifteen years of studio and research practice on the theme of trauma which was the title of the first exhibition of Dumith Kulasekara held in 2008 in Colombo.  Trauma-Stigmata includes more than twenty paintings including objects (shrines) addressing the transference of trauma both as bodily and psychic wounds created within one or a group of people by encountering the different cultural and natural atmospheres, from the past act, memory, and imagination to permanent traces or fragmented marks imprinted on both body and psyche. The works in the exhibition are not representations of such experiences, but rather imaginary responses to the whole context that pollinate for different narrations.  

From smaller-scale paintings to larger-scale epic paintings made in the traditional medium of oil signify the painting as a language of excavating personal and social space in the past, the present and the unknown future.  As Dumith Kulasekara states “Painting is a psycho-archeological excavation digging down surface reality to the unknown deepest layers of the psyche. I am not excavating the other's body, but mine. Then, unexpectedly, I would find traces of your presence within the excavated history.

Fragments of bodies, traces of gender identities, bodies holding animals and a female child, and praying bodies and hands situated in imaginary landscapes full of flowers, natural creatures and animals symptomize the imaginary response to the memories of the past, its traces and repetitions in the present context. The lack of the presence of masculine bodies in these works signifies the question of gendered bodies. 



Despite the philosophical and theoretical foundation of the title of the show and each title of the painting, during the exhibition, the works were not labelled, and the text of the works and exhibition was also not provided allowing the audience to experience the exhibition in ways that the audience is related to the theme. This also extends an openness of truth/s in art by reinterpreting the art practices from different perspectives and theories rather than narrowly and politically oriented contextualisation. 


Trauma-Stigmata
January 26 - 28, 2023
Harold Peiris Gallery, Colombo, SL.

This Exhibition is presented by Atelier Dumith Kulasekara (All rights received©2023) 

 

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