Human rights exhibition ends today
View(s):
The JDA Perera Gallery on Horton Place, Colombo 7, is the scene of a human rights arts festival organised by the Arts Council of Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka and others, featuring the work of many prominent artists, musicians and dramatists. Opened on December 10, the exhibition has performances every evening on the theme of human rights.
There are free books on human rights available courtesy of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka and the organisers hope that the event will promote awareness among the general public.
Anoma Wijewardene is one of the well known artists who has lent her support to the project and her artist’s statement makes no bones about her commitment. She writes,“The installation was created at the end of the war in 2009, imagining a peace, a unity, a renewal, a security, a coming home. A dawning of hope and trust. The installation alluded to displaced persons, perhaps moving towards a new life and a new beginning.
Anoma Wijewardene’s installation
The seven panels can be viewed individually and collectively, by slipping between them and becoming a part of them, so that we can hope, briefly, to share the collateral damage of loss and losing, but also experience the perennial hope for a better future.
Eight years since it was created, how does the installation speak to people now? Does it still hold important messages to which we need to listen?
…….In 2017, eight years after the end of the war, the installation draws from the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the United Nations document that defines the basic rights and fundamental freedoms to which all human beings are entitled, to ask the question: are we in Sri Lanka at peace?
The installation urges you to interrogate the meaning of “peace” and the elements that constitute it. Can we be at peace if these elements do not exist?
…..In 2017 we are yet again at a critical juncture – at the precipice of squandering away another chance to achieve progressive change and lasting peace. Entrenching progressive change requires brave and difficult decisions; it requires leaders to be courageous and principled, and citizens to be socially conscious and responsible.
We can use or lose this opportunity…yet again…and this time there might be no turning back.”
The exhibition is open today from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The final evening performance will be held from 6 p.m. Admission is free.