Here, artists Mahesha Kariyapperuma and Tharmapalan Tilaxan offer two distinct yet poignant practices. Working across installation, design and documentary photography, they attend to what circulates quietly through bodies, landscapes, and cultural systems, unseen, yet deeply felt.

Mahesha’s practice is anchored in ecological, cultural and spiritual systems and the ways they shape identity over time. Trained as a landscape architect, her work moves fluidly between art, design and spatial research, drawing from environmental theory, Kandyan cultural traditions and personal experience as a woman raised within deeply hierarchical social structures.

“Through research in landscape architecture, I discovered how deeply our cultural practices were tied to nature,” says Mahesha. “When I studied the origins of our ancient, nature-based and socio-cultural systems, I realised there were incredible values worth preserving, but ironically, those values are forgotten while the outdated social hierarchies remain. Art became the medium through which I could critically reflect on the environmental and social world I grew up in.”

For Colomboscope 2026, Mahesha turns to the Kandyan drum as both form and metaphor. Historically understood as a conduit between earth and sky, the drum embodied a circular world view in which sound, ritual, healing and community were inseparable. Her installation revisits these layered meanings, tracing the life cycle of the drum, from dead tree to vibrating instrument, alongside the life of a woman shaped by the same cultural rhythms.

“The ‘magul’ rituals that mark social adulthood form the milestones of this narrative,” she explains. “While this piece is not a feminist critique, it is a deeply female perspective shaped by my own lived experiences and the ones I am yet to go through.”

Inspired by temple art and its immersive, didactic qualities, the work invites viewers to lie down and look upward, positioning the body as an active participant within the system. Through this work, Mahesha hopes viewers attune themselves to the interconnected systems she presents and to the spiritual dimension of the Kandyan drum. “I hope they question the self-centred, linear systems we currently live under and imagine how circular, environmentally aligned, spiritually conscious frameworks could guide our future,” she shares.

“Above all, I hope they recognise the cultural value of traditional drums and the depth of meaning they once held in society.”

Working from Jaffna, Tharmapalan Tilaxan has spent over 15 years developing a documentary practice shaped by patience, trust and ethical responsibility. Self-taught, his photography emerged from lived proximity to struggle. “What drew me to people and everyday life was simple: I grew up among people who lived through struggle,” reflects Tharmapalan.

“I saw families rebuilding from loss, people carrying memories that they never spoke about, and men and women working silently to survive. These scenes were part of my daily life. These ordinary moments had a depth that no staged or glamorous image could ever match.”

Tharmapalan’s Colomboscope project, Echoes of Stillness, resists event-based documentation in favour of attentive listening. Through long exposures and subdued compositions, figures dissolve into traces, echoes that hover between presence and absence. “These images carry the unseen flows of emotion, inherited trauma and survival, much like the ancestral rhythms that circulate knowledge, resilience, and connection across generations,” he explains.

His approach is deliberately slow. Trust is built long before the camera is raised; the act of photographing comes only after listening, observing and becoming part of the environment. “Over the years, my approach changed. I stopped chasing perfect light or dramatic scenes and started chasing real stories,” notes Tharmapalan. “When I worked on documenting the scars of the civil war for my exhibition, I couldn’t just take photos of ruins or documents; I had to spend days listening to survivors, understanding their experiences, and being present with them. That patience and empathy became more important than pressing the shutter.”

Rather than directing or staging moments, Tharmapalan bears witness to small gestures that carry emotional and historical weight. Absence, in his work, is as powerful as presence.

For Tharmapalan, photography is not about aesthetics or mastery, but responsibility. His images invite viewers to look beyond the surface and consider the systems of war, migration, development, and governance that shape individual lives. “Most of the people I photograph don’t have a platform to speak for themselves. They live normal, hard-working, often unnoticed lives,” he explains. “Many of them carry unspoken memories, trauma, and experiences that never make it into official history. When I document them, I want viewers to understand that these individuals are not “subjects”; they are people with families, responsibilities, fears, strengths and struggles.”

What he seeks is not sympathy but recognition; an acknowledgement of lives often left outside official narratives. “Behind every frame, there is a lived reality shaped by politics, economics, migration, war, loss, culture, and survival. I want people to look beyond the surface and think about why that situation exists,” he remarks. “More importantly, I hope viewers feel a sense of empathy, not sympathy. I don’t want pity for the people I photograph; I want understanding.”

While one artist constructs immersive environments and the other works through quiet observation, both are engaged in acts of recovery—of spiritual systems, of memory, of lived truths. Their works move at different tempos, yet share a commitment to slowing down and paying attention.

At Rhythm Alliances, their practices resonate through a shared sensitivity to rhythm: the vibration of a drum connecting earth and sky; the lingering echo of a body moving through space. Together, they offer ways of listening to culture, to history, and to the subtle forces that continue to shape how we live, remember and endure.

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