Pushpakumara was inspired at the Institute of Aesthetic studies (Now the University of Visual and Performing Arts) where he received his graduate level training in fine arts. The involvement in the 90’s Trend Art and working at the Theertha International Artists’ Collective was a major collaboration for Pushpakumara who has also worked as a set designer in the fields of theater and cinema. He was also part of the No Order Group in 1990.
Goodwill Hardware: Art of Koralegedara Pushpakumara
Koralegedara Pushpakuamara is one of the initial followers of the 90’s Trend. His early approaches to art can be mostly identified as a lineup of autobiographical narrations that discussed the frustration, pain and suffering as well as the internal crisis of youth following a narcissistic approach. That is, to present the politically, culturally and socially constructed torture and brutalities as part of one’s own tragic existence of life or himself as an integral part of such a situation. To articulate in another way, in most of his early works Pushpakumara depicts the single individual frustrated by the constantly present social, cultural and political brutalization as the main motif. In most cases, this stance of his provided impulsion for an autobiographical narration. The uncertainty and severe pain marked by instantaneous and broken brush strokes, Pushpakumara’s lonely male figure was the central motif of his early works. It could be postulated that through this process he transformed the larger community’s socio-cultural tragic experiences into a self centered pain or experience. His work titled ‘Figure I” is a very good example for this (See image 1).
Even though the exhibition “Goodwill hardware” at Theertha Red Dot Gallery still continue to engage with his earlier approaches that critiques the social, cultural, political brutalization and human suffering, its main articulation form (that includes its surface material or its’ gamut of visual languages) is built with a emphasis on ‘materiality’ than earlier. This is done by bringing ‘material’ into the artwork with their own social, political meaning rather than using them in the modernist sense of using raw materialin art practice. Thereby, Pushpakumara posits the ‘material’ as the main expressive element in the artwork. In other words, this illustrates the use of ‘material’ in the artwork retaining the same meaning it has within the human/ cultural usage as well as with the same meaning they are used in extraordinary socio-cultural and political behavior at present.
If we consider Pushpakumara’s approach as an art historical argument in relation to Sri Lanka’s recent art history, it is connected to Jagath Weerasinghe’s argument ‘philosophy and theory exist in the material itself but not external to it’, an idea which he articulated in the exhibition ‘Charted Theft’ curated by him[i]. In that exhibition the main element of activity was thinking of art as material, things, places, weaving and making. As an example for this idea Arjuna Gunarathna’s “Tied Books” and Anura Krishantha’s “Stolen Wreaths” could be pointed out (see image 2, 3). Also, sub-meanings subliminally present in some of Pushpakumara’s works as well as certain direct meanings in his other works binds this exhibition to a deeper art historical discourse. Pushpakumara’s installation titled ’22 Bags’ done at the first Vasal International Art Camp in 2001 well illustrates this aspect of his art approach (see image 4).
This time Pushpakumara’s thematic absorption as well as his artworks which force us into a dialog, entertains a certain confrontational nuance. The disconnectedness presented in the adjective and the noun of the nomenclature, “Goodwill-Hardware” or else the connection between the live/ nonliving aspects presented juxtaposed in the overall exhibition probes us to engage with it deeply to find the meaning presented in such anomalies.
It could be suggested that by playing on the duality as well as incorporating the same dualityitself present in the directness and indirectness as the main objective of the exhibition, in a complex totality, by creating a fine veil of humor between foolishness or shallowness and responsibility or depth.
It could be observed that Pushpakumara is trying to show the incongruent logic between human feeling and construction material /technology ,(and) the mechanical (or clinical) and false connection between human suffering and manipulative political interventions.
On the other hand the materiality of the artworks that he has constructed positions us within three, perceptive dimensions. The first, is to take the ‘material’ that are brutal in its basic appearance or intrinsic in its nature, and are socio-culturally imbued with power to dissent or threaten and transform them into things that are acceptable which one could live without much trouble. His work titled “Goodwill-Hardware 1 series” are examples of such an attempt (see image 5 & 6). The second is to take the “objects and material” that are connected with necessities of human existence, but that has a potential to be brutalized with effort, and to cover it with a protective skin. This aspect is illustrated in his work titled “Goodwill-Hardware 2” (see image 7). Pushpakumara’s third presentation is to convert the ‘material’ that is seen as dangerous or signaling danger into non threatening and playful situations. Such is seen in his work “Goodwill-Hardware 3” (see image 8).
Through these three types of material constructions (human, socio-cultural as well as socio-political) Pushpakumara in his work converts the situations and material manifestations of brutalization, segregation/ division, alerting of danger or signifying insecurity or temporality into things and environments that are secure, attractive, easy, and acceptable.
It could be suggested that by doing so Pushpakuamara attempts to hint at the intensely harsh and bitter human sufferings that are dismissed from social memory and forgotten through skilfull political maneuverings of subtle as well as blatant political discourses or unrelenting cultural strategies.
Prasanna Ranabahu
12 November 2009
Translated by Lalith Manage
[i] Jagath Weerasinghe (2003), ‘Charted Theaft’, exhibition catalog essay, Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Ethulkotte: VAFA.
‘(in)durable Hardware’ Pushpakumara’s early works have been expressionistic and his theme was mostly about the self and private life signed with tormented human figures. Those works were made with quick, sketchy and gestural brush strokes – in short they were kind of painted-drawings. Soon after the end of the 30-year war in 2009 Pushpakumara’s work took a turn – he more or less abandoned his quick and sketchy style of painting – to be specific, painting itself. With his abandonment of the gestural brush strokes, his obsessive positioning of the human figure in the center of his work too changed. The lonely human image that he kept painting over and over again throughout the war-years disappears – should I say ‘got displaced’ some where. It is revealing to note that this decentering or the displacement of the human image from his paintings happened in the aftermath of ‘ending the war’. Decentering/ displacement of human image was replaced by overall patterned surfaces as if his attention is moved from the ‘subject’ to its ‘context’. The patterned surfaces of his current work in two dimensional and three dimensional forms have very specific intentions that explore the post war socio- political landscape.
Pushpakumara’s current body of works continues the departure he marked in 2009 with a remarkable proliferation of creative energy. Some of the works in this collection, looks back to the expressionistic style that he tried.
to push aside, and brings it back with a freshened up energy. He has recaptured the idea of his kind of painting from a different path. Like some memories, some art-habits too don’t leave artists easily – they actually keep coming back in various guises. Some of the works in the current show speaks for this inability of purging certain habits and pleasures from one’s idea of artistic-self. Pushpakumara reinvents the sketchiness of his earlier works in some of the works in the current show. One is struck by their similarity to his earlier works and then mused by their differences and by the distance they try to make from his past. Here he infuses the technique of screen-printing to a painterly effect by way of repeated impressions of barbed wire, wall plugs, nails etc.
Pushpakumara’s current works share a few visual traits with a trend that emerged with the art of the 90s, which I have called the ‘Political Kitsch’. Several Sri Lankan artists began to work with kitsch material taking them as a particular system of knowledge production to intervene with contemporary social issues of Sri Lanka, especially in response to the war that ended in 2009 and the populist rhetoric that bolstered the idea of ‘war’. Sanath Kalubdana and Anura Krishantha, for example, have been working with kitsch materials for a long time in this vein. While their work usually incorporated an element of sarcasm or funniness, Pushpakumara does the opposite – the kitsch in his work tries to be serious and stern in most of the cases, while a work like ‘the illuminated barbed wire’ could be different, about which I have to say a few words at the end of this brief essay.
The primary trope in these works is the barbed wire – which is hardly a kitsch material but Pushpakumara manipulates it to be otherwise. He has been working with barbed wires and such hardware materials since 2009. He would bring a shiny and touchable surface to the barbed wire by encasing them in flexible plastic tubes – a skin to hide the true nature of barbed wires that is capable of inflicting pain. His intention was to capture the plight of the Tamil refugees that had to spend in refugee camps after the war and the apathy of the public in the south of Sri Lanka to this situation - apathy of the south to the suffering of the Tamils affected by the last days of the war. He first showed this series of work that uses barbed wire, hacksaw blades, tent-cloth and plastic casings in 2009 with an ironical title, ‘Goodwill Hardware’ in a series of three exhibitions curated under the concept of ‘skin’ in the ‘ 2009 Pradharshana Wasanthaya’ exhibition season of the Red Dot Gallery. Those exhibitions attempted to respond to a certain mood that was prevalent in the south of Sri Lanka in 2009 – a mood that constituted a glaring loss of empathy.
In the current show he presents us with a cross section of the entire range of works that he has produced over the past 4 years. The visual weavings that came about from a moment of loss continues to perpetuate itself, at times making digressions. The work that stands apart from his earlier works of the ‘hardware’ series is the ‘Illuminated Barbed Wire’ consisting running LED lights and plastic tubing that looks like a barbed wire laid on the floor. This work presenting the kitsch aspect more than in the other works, for me, suggests a sinister temper that tries to be some thing else, something deceitful. Jagath Weerasinghe Theertha. March 2014
Text and pix by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai
At a time when Sri Lanka has already started to forget its recent past and artists have begun to move away from political and interventionist themes, Koralegedara Pushpakumara’s exhibition of paintings under the theme “Goodwill Hardware 2013” is remarkable works. His powerful paintings attempt to point at the human suffering which the society has undergone during many decades of war and violence. While questioning and confronting the post war environment, he attempts to dismiss the human suffering from social memory by sheer political discourses of erasure.
His exhibition of paintings is currently being held at Hempel Galleries. Nearly 27 screen print paintings and collage on canvass are displayed under the illustrated subtitles of ‘Barbed Wire, Blade Wire, Barrier Tape, Pole and Wall Plug’.
“I used to visit my relatives in Ampara in 1970s and 80s. ‘Barbed Wire’ was very much part of the everyday landscape which has struck with me as a strong image in my memory, since my childhood. There is a division, restriction, denied access and violence. Although the war is over, the boundaries and divisions continue to exist. Today, these boundaries and divisions are less visible, but are still present.
Barbed Wire is a symbol of violence. 2” x 2” pole is another symbol of violence. Wall Plug depicts the act of aggression. Damage is done by inserting the wall plug into the wall, and thereafter, unable to forget the memory despite any patching up” says artist Koralegedar Pushpakumara.
He has used black, gold and white acrylic colours on canvass to elaborate each situation. His art works convey a strong message in a post war situation.
http://www.ceylontoday.lk/18-23645-news-detail-goodwill-hardware-2013.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GOODWILL HARDWARE: Beautification of Prohibition K. Pushpakumara, a member of the initial group of artists following the 90s Trend, presents his new work based on the continuing series Goodwill Hardware first seen in his solo exhibition at Red Dot Gallery, Colombo in 2009, followed by his participation in the Colombo Art Biennale in 2012 and now at Hempel Galleries. Anoli Perera comments on Pushpakumara’s work: “Primarily a painter, this is a minimalist view in comparison to his earlier work displayed in a series of screen printed and painted large canvases. While imagery in this work at a glance is seen as patterned forms that are almost meditative, what is represented in the images, soon takes you away from any inclinations towards spirituality. By using images denoting items used mainly for restricting movement or associated with violence and war, and presenting these in a seemingly design-oriented patterned form, his works play with the juxtapositions of banality and non-banality, innocence and non-innocence”. Pushpakumara’s works are pivotal in a time in Sri Lanka where society has already started to forget the recent violent past and artists have begun to move away from political and interventionist themes. Curator of the exhibition, Annoushka Hempel says: “Pushpakumara’s Goodwilll Hardware series is very much inspired by memories of his childhood in Amapara where barbed wire was everywhere and very much part of life. For Pushpakumara this image has always represented division between two worlds, restriction and denied access. Wishing this division to end, he started by covering the barbed wire with protective plastic, so it can in fact be touched. For this exhibition, he has recreated these images, as a reminder that these divisions and boundaries, although less visible, are in fact still present”. In Pushpakumara’s words: “Buddhism, media, politics, landscape, religion. The development of the Sri Lankan landscape, particularly in Colombo. In this body of work I have added small sections of painted colour to signify evolvement. Even with this ‘embellishment’, the division still exists, perhaps in a different way but it is still there. I see ‘beautification’ as a decorated surface”. Annoushka Hempel states, “When I look at Pushpakumara’s barbed wire work, one of things that strikes me, is that although barbed wire is generally a symbol of violence or prohibition, he depicts it with the intricacy and beauty of Jasmine flowers which works as a kind of beautification of violence. Another dimension I find intriguing in this body of work is the way in which the works have been framed. A seemingly unlikely juxtaposition to place these highly contemporary works in traditional gilt frames. Contemporary versus traditional, the value given by what is traditional and quite simply the curiosity it evokes in the viewer!” http://artaholicblog.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The story of a Sri Lankan woodcarver who became a prisoner and a political artist
Koralegedara Pushpakumara disturbs the notions of history, politics and art in his rendering of Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lanka that Koralegadara Pushpakumara conjures in his art, is not seen in idyllic tourist guides, and it is far removed from the sanitised discussions of state officials. This is an aesthetic imagination of Lanka at the cusp of romance and reality, neatly blending his personal experiences with public history.
Pushpakumara, who is also known as Pushpe, was an eyewitness to the insurgency, violence, genocide, and civil war that wrecked Sri Lanka. The curious combination of symbols in his works present experiential accounts loaded with satire.
Pushpe’s maze of art works, including paintings, installations and performance art, earned critical acclaim in South Asia and beyond. This November, his Dissonant Images is being shown in India.
Wall Plug (16) 2013. Mixed media on canvas 190.5 x 360 cm. Copyright: Pushpakumara Koralegadara
The great churn
Koralegedara Pushpakumara was born to a family of carpenters, but grew up with an artistic inclination towards woodwork, especially carving. From the beginning, a source of inspiration was the famous woodcarving of the Gadaladeniya Ambekka temple in Kandy.
As he grew older, Pushpe wanted to continue experimenting with woodcarving, but life in the 1980s was taken over by Sri Lanka’s political revolution. In his childhood, Pushpe witnessed the caste discrimination his friends from lower caste groups experienced. Given his personal affinity towards a sense of Buddhist equality, he was dismayed at the caste-based divisions between Govigama (the land-owning upper caste group) and Rody (caste groups that perform work such as manual scavenging).
Like many Sinhalese youth, Pushpe leaned towards the transformative dream of the political left, and its most concerted manifestation, popularly known as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Most young people inclined towards the JVP attended its lectures in isolated locations around Peradeniya and Kandy.
Unveiling the confusion (xi)2004, Mixed media 110 x 86 cm. Copyright: Pushpakumara Koralegadara
The 1971 uprising against president Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government attracted attention worldwide. The crackdown on the uprising claimed the lives of more than 10,000 youths in Sri Lanka. JVP's founder Rohan Wijeweera was arrested and imprisoned in Jaffna. This bitter defeat led to a second, longer insurgency that lasted nearly two years, between 1987 to 1989. By this time, the ethnic conflict between Tamil rebels and the Sinhalese-dominated government had begun, and in reaction to Indian involvement in according the Tamils autonomy, the JVP assumed a Sinhalese nationalist identity along with its revolutionary Communism.
They fought the Indian Peace Keeping Force and mobilised an anti-India sentiment, preventing Lankans from consuming Indian goods. However, the result of this uprising too included massive casualty of the innocent people – JVP cadres, government personnel, as well as the life of Wijeweera.
It was during this time that many who were under threat, including Pushpe, fled to Ampara in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. Pushpe recalled wearing a cyanide pill in a locket, hanging from his neck those days, so he could commit suicide if he was ever captured.
As luck would have it, Pushpe could not evade arrest.
“In 1989, I was a final year student in school, a 21-year-old activist of the student movement attached to the JVP that rose against the Sri Lankan government." he said. "When the government crackdown of the JVP began, and I fled to Ampara, I was captured, detained and tortured. Finally, miraculously, I was released – for which the exact reason is still not fully clear to me.”
Excavation (school uniform,burnt tyre) 2004 Mixed media 210 x 54 cm. Copyright: Pushpakumara Koralegadara
As a fugitive, Pushpe was still making woodcarvings at his brother’s workshop in Ampara. He was highly sought after among homes, for his experimental work. He had by this time, realised the consequences of the uprising: a violent loss of lives, rather than the promised structural transformation. He had witnessed the elaborate mechanism of killing those employed by both the JVP and the Sri Lankan army, as well as the rising violence of LTTE. He watched helplessly, as the the notorious “necklace”, a garland of burning tyres was used to asphyxiate the rebels and suspects.
In our conversation, Pushpe recalled:
“Many thousands disappeared and were killed both in the war and the uprising. After 15 years, being an ex-JVPer and an active artist, I joined an institute in Colombo to do a postgraduate diploma in archaeology. The assignment was about dating dead bodies. I couldn’t escape the flashbacks. I wondered – how would someone find and date the dead bodies of my contemporary youth, who disappeared, and the people who were massacred in the war in North? It will be under the burnt tyres with engine oil, in mixed, decaying, charred clothes. You wouldn’t find the typical succession of insects, other creatures and decaying patterns – you would need a different theory to explain and date them.”
Political art in Sri Lanka
Pushpe returned to Colombo and obtained a formal education at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies, University of Kelaniya, in 1997. When his art was exhibited in Colombo, Pushpe became one of the early artists in the contemporary visual art scene in Sri Lanka, which has been described as a “1990s trend” by the eminent art historian and artist Jagath Weerasinghe.
Weerasinghe, artist Anoli Perera and many others contributed to this trend, creating a new paradigm of artistic practice under the institution named Theertha Artists’ Collective based in Colombo. A vivid turn to the political underpinned the visual arts at Theertha. The political undercurrents and appeals of these artworks subsumed the individual self, socio-cultural traditions, and politico-public encounters of violence.
Goodwill Hardware 1 - IV . 2009.Plywood board, trapolene, wax, barb wire, clear hose, white car paint. 50 x 81 cm. Copyright: Pushpakumara Koralegadara
According to Weerasinghe, Pushpe is conscious of the socio-cultural underpinnings that form his existence as a painter – this is evident in some of his famous works, such as his series titled Goodwill Hardware and Barbed Wire, which stand in testimony to Pushpe’s quest to re-fashion culture in the time of civil war and its aftermath. He fuses the sublime and bizarre, innocuous and injurious, the colourful and banal to engender a sense of sarcasm.
Barbed Wire (xiii) 2012 Screen Print, Acylic on Canvas 110x67.5 cm. Copyright: Pushpakumara Koralegadara
The motif of a knot, borrowed from the woodcarvings in the Ambekka Devalaya in Kandy, appears on the surface of Barbed Wire. The knotty barbs, in a frame that appears normal otherwise, unsettles the usual grammar of viewership and art appreciation. Pushpe also scatters fine dots in his works to symbolise the vocation of woodcarving by the caste of carpenters of Sri Lanka.
Violence appears frequently in Pushpe’s works: in Excavation, he puts a burnt tyre at the centre of the canvas. In Wall Plug, Pushpe paints a colourful pond with the famous Lankan flower Niyangala (Gloriosa Superba/Glory Lily/Poison Flame). The beautiful flowers have poisonous roots, which Pushpe had seen consumed by the distressed victims of the ravaged Lankan countryside.
In his rendering of Sri Lanka, Pushpa disturbs the fixed notions of history, politics, and art.
Pushpe’s Lanka comes to India in a show of his select works, titled Dissonant Images, at the gallery Exhibit 320 in New Delhi.
Dev Pathak teaches sociology at South Asian University and researches on performance arts in Sri Lanka.
Goodwill Hardware 2013: Art of Koralegedara Pushpakumara K. Pushpakumara, who is part of the initial group of artists following the 90s Trend, presents his new work based on the continuing series Goodwill Hardware first seen in his exhibition at Red Dot Gallery in 2009. From the inception, his art interrogated very personal experiences and connected them with the socio-political environment of the time. Primarily a painter, he continues to explore extremely pertinent political themes in his work. His current exhibition is a second of a series of exhibitions he has planned under Goodwill Hardware. Barbed wire was taken as a sign of aggression denoting violence in society; he presented them in covered plastic tubes, arranging them in aesthetic formats of installations and relief work in 2009. These works unhesitatingly questioned the immediate post-war environment where politics and the general attitude emphasized a false pretense that all violence ended with the cessation of war. His work insinuates otherwise and questions what is underneath the seeming peace.
Koralegedara Pushpakuamara’s early approaches to art were autobiographical where his narrations discussed the frustration, pain, and suffering as well as the internal crisis of youth from a self-absorbed approach. As Ranbahu writes on Goodwill Hardware exhibition catalog, Pushpakumara’s work “presents the politically, culturally and socially constructed torture and brutalities as part of one’s own tragic existence of life”. Placing the artist as an integral part of the overall socio-political and cultural situation is also part of the 90s Trend’s ideological markers. His work on Goodwill Hardware moves away from this self-absorptive or narcissistic mood of his early works into a mode of social criticality within a more forthright approach. Adopting a minimalist and almost banal presentation in comparison to his earlier work on Goodwill Hardware that emphasized materiality and three-dimensional work, the present work is a series of screen printed and painted large canvases that illustrate barbed wire, blade wire, barrier tape etc. in different backgrounds. While imagery in his work at a glance is seen as patterned forms that are almost meditative, what is represented in the images soon take you away from any inclinations towards spirituality. By using images denoting items used mainly for restricting movement or associated with violence and war, and presenting in a seemingly design-oriented patterned form, his work play with the juxtapositions of banality and non-banality, innocence and non-innocence to get his point across. With Goodwill Hardware, Pushpakumara’s work gets into a confrontational nuance. Goodwill Hardware attempts to point at the human suffering that a society has undergone and its attempts to dismiss such suffering from the social memory by blatant political discourses of erasure.
Another reading of the patterned imagery of his canvases points to the denial of society to recognize the camouflaged violence that has permeated into society settling like sediments underneath its surface. Purposeful use of violence-prone imagery such as barbed wire in a meditative sort of arrangement in screen print references to the camouflage of violence that has merged into the background of socio-political landscape of the artist’s context of living as a non-descript situation. Further, the glossy decorative picture frames around these canvases depicts the violence which has been contradictorily elevated into level of fervor. It also talks about the violence and cruelty that has been reinterpreted and simplified as unavoidable circumstances, by society that is in a grandiose fervor. Pushpakumara’s work become important particularly in the post-war situation where already the society has started to forget the recent violent past and artists have begun to move away from political and interventionist themes.
