ARTRA Experientials: Art in a private salon setting
What if the future of art isn’t bigger in scale, but more intimate and meaningful?
ARTRA Experientials, a series of exhibitions and art walkthroughs will be taking place from June 25-29 in a private collector’s home in Colombo. The private art salon experience attempts to redefine how one can engage with contemporary art in a way that art is not merely viewed on the walls of the space, but actively celebrated, critiqued and lived with.
Set in the home of a private collector on 28th Lane, Flower Road, Colombo 7, the series of exhibitions by ARTRA’s Emerging Artists Best of 2022 – 2025 collectively reframes the physical space of the home. These exhibitions seek to transform physical space into a gallery of lived realities – where each room is a witness and a dynamic archive of one’s social, spiritual, and emotional lives.
Art in a more intimate space: When the different places of a home provide room for artistic engagement
Among the artists featured in K. Mathiskumar, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2022 whose exhibition ‘Wounded Faith’ critically explores the scars of ethnic conflict and religious chaos left over by the conflict. Melding acrylics and mixed media to depict religious structures such as pagodas, mosques and churches, the artist acknowledges the wounds of distrust that still run through our nation, while highlighting the strength of these spaces as traditional pillars of community. He invites viewers to envision a harmonious Sri Lanka, and asks the critical question: “Are we truly at peace?”
In striking parallel to Mathiskumar’s exhibit, the mixed media works of Malki Jayakody, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2023, in her exhibition ‘Places of Persistence’ critically examines colourism by tracing its roots to colonial ideology. Malki challenges the constructed notion of the island as a ‘paradise’ and instead reframes it as a site of systemic erasure. By centring the lush paddy fields of her hometown Asgiriya, her work interrogates how colonial perceptions of land, labour, and skin continue to shape our beauty ideals and social hierarchies. Through hand-stitched embroidery, acrylics and watercolour, her mixed-media compositions are tactile meditations on the unseen wounds that continue to inform our societal standards of beauty.
K. Mathiskumar’s Reconciliation II and below, Venura Madurapperuma’s The Room VI.
Moving from the power dynamics inherent to colonized land and labour, ‘Bordered Bodies’- the latest exhibition of Mohamed Hathi, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2023, interrogates the dynamics of power and gender inherent to domestic spaces. Drawing from his observations in the East, Hathi presents vignettes of patriarchal oppression and feminist resistance, capturing the daily struggles faced by women for their autonomy.
In this collection, he focuses on the social convention of marriage as a tool of patriarchal control where the institution, often idealized as sacred or stabilizing, becomes instead a mechanism of surveillance and ownership. Through his bold manipulation of the human form, Hathi exposes how women’s bodies are policed and claimed within the dynamics of the home, and the larger society.
Rajani Serasinghe, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2024, uses the cyclical patterns of nature to reflect upon the resilience and transformation inherent to existence. Her exhibition ‘Impermanence’ acknowledges the natural impermanence of life. Her stunning mosaics poignantly examine the ever-shifting nature of existence and the strength of perseverance in nature. By repurposing discarded objects through recycled glass and materials, she transforms what was once forgotten into vibrant symbols of renewal.
Finally, tying together the curatorial theme of the collective series of Emerging Artists’ exhibitions, ‘The Room’ – an exhibition of woodcut prints by Venura Madurapperuma, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2025, investigates the bedroom as a site of memory and subjective human experiences. Touching on French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’, Venura explores the bedroom as a psychological terrain – a container of unique sensations, unspoken memories, and the quiet persistence of self. His series of woodcut prints warp line, rhythm and form to evoke a disorienting sense of isolation, anxiety and desperate longing. In this collection, he frames the spaces of the home as a mirror to a person’s most vulnerable truths, and a witness to their most intimate moments of turmoil.
ARTRA Experientials in June
will also include ‘Will to Power’ a solo exhibition by Kesara Ratnavibhushana, a retrospective of his photographic practice over the years.
For more information, contact +94 77 570 1891
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