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WE ARE ENSLAVED FOREVER TO A DREAM OF A CROWN, LONG LOST, reads the engraving on a brass crown in Anoli Perera’s“Objects of Interest” series, 2023. Placed on a wooden shelf, the crown finds itself in the company of a copper head and hand and a pile of aluminum eyeglass frames and lenses. On a shelf below, two loudspeakers share space with objects such as a bunch of exquisitely crafted metal lotuses and a pair of wings. The objects offer clues to violent events that have wracked Perera’s home country, Sri Lanka—for instance, the 2019 Easter bombings in the capital city, Colombo. The installation serves as a damning indictment of the Sri Lankan political class, whose unbridled quest for power has pushed the island to the brink of ruin.
In her exhibition “Debris Collector,” Perera attempted to make sense of the transformation of her nation, once considered a golden isle by its citizens, into its present precarious condition. She has been working on the theme of the “Debris Collector” since 2022, a year that saw a series of mass protests against the government. The concept can also be viewed as a natural extension of her earlier preoccupation, “Memory Keeper,” 2013, which concerned resistance against amnesia and erasure. Both bodies of work navigate the past to make sense of the present and potentially predict the future. The “Memory Keeper” works are deeply personal and often tinged with nostalgia, while those in this show use a more public lens.
In the large fabric piece—the artist refers to these as tapestries— I am Drowning Series I , 2023, Perera calls out the hypocrisy of politicians. Political figures dressed in lily white hold flowers aloft, as if to distract from their behind-the-scenes machinations. At the bottom of the work run the words I AM DROWNING IN THE ROTTING SMELL OF FLOWERS. The layering of custom-made printed cotton, linen, and sheer fabrics imparts a three-dimensionality to the work. In stitching the various layers together, the artist leaves the running sutures clearly visible. The installation I am Drowning Series II , 2023, foregrounds the brain drain caused by the mass exodus of professionals from the country. While the fabric ladders hanging from the gallery’s ceiling are symbolic of their escape routes, the lamenting children portrayed in the evocative tapestry point to the uncertain future that confronts an entire generation.
Perera layers writing in some of the works, juxtaposing the printed text with her figurative imagery. Lines of the Sri Lankan Constitution form the backdrop in Wedged I and II , 2023. For symbols of power, such as a crown and a throne-like chair in The Gift Series I: Language wars , 2023, lines of text in English and Sinhala surround figures of British royalty. The indirect references here are to the 1956 Official Language Act (generally known as the Sinhala Only Act), which replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language. This action alienated large sections of the population, among them Tamils, who felt that they had been discriminated against by the majority Sinhalese.
In one room, hand-crocheted curtains formed a veil for the single-channel, black-and-white video Conquest , 2018. Shot within the Galle Fort, built by the Portuguese and later fortified by the Dutch, the video alludes not just to Sri Lanka’s colonial legacy, but also to the current situation, with the fort area now the near-exclusive preserve of foreign tourists. In a valiant attempt, as if to claim the fort as his own, a local man dives from the top of the fort into the water below for money, clambering up the rocks again to proclaim himself victorious. In this poignant show Perera depicts the perilous conditions her fellow citizens endure and plaintively asks how to pick up the pieces of a country that appears to have fallen apart.
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