Artists’ response to erasure
View(s):ARTRA Trail 2026 unveils ‘Silenced’ in Colombo and Galle
ARTRA Trail 2026, taking place at the Lionel Wendt Gallery in Colombo from January 16-22 and across Galle Fort from Jan. 23-25, primarily revolves around the poignant exhibition, ‘Silenced’ curated by Azara Jaleel.
Featuring the works of 15 contemporary artists, this group exhibition responds to erasure, reflecting the shifts within the socio-political context of
Sri Lanka from the 1980s to the 2020s. Their works respond to this question through memory, materiality, marginalized identities and sites of resistance where their act of ‘creating’ in itself transforms their works as means to combating what has been lost through the years.
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- Venura Madurapperuma
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- Rajani Serasinghe
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- Layla Gonaduwa
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- Kesara Ratnavibhushana
The opening night of ‘Silenced’ will be followed by artist discussions with Menika van der Poorten, Marco Manamperi, and Gayan Prageeth. The programme continues with Sujeewa Kumari, Layla Gonaduwa, Kesara Ratnavibhushana, Sanjeewa Kumara, Hathi Mohamed, and Malki Jayakody, concluding with a panel discussion and launch of the latest issue of ARTRA.
ARTRA Trail then moves to Galle from the 23rd to the 25th, featuring artist walks with Kesara, Layla, Venura Madurapperuma, and Marco Manamperi, alongside art and culinary events and exhibitions.
Reclaiming the past is one of the key features of ‘Silenced’. The exhibition features the photography of Menika van der Poorten, whose work documents the “disappearing past” of the Eurasian community by making long-overshadowed family archives “insistently visible”.
Gayan Prageeth explores national trauma through visual references to pivotal moments in Sri Lankan history, including the 1983 Black July and the 2022 Aragalaya. His work captures a sense of continuous unrest and political rupture. Anusha Gajaweera utilizes his Hammer and Nails series (featured on our cover) to process the “dark well of violence” stemming from the ethnic conflict and recent global crises, using stark imagery to reflect the threat of brutality.
Exploring the urban landscapes through woodcut prints, Venura Madurapperuma, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist and Best of 2025 captures the “panic and fear” of contemporary life, while Chathurika Jayani reinterprets urban skylines through a surrealist lens, questioning what cities like Galle and Colombo choose to remember or erase.
Interdisciplinary artist Sujeewa Kumari uses colonial remnants and broken objects to examine the layering of collective memory, while Layla Gonaduwa explores the shifting idea of “home” through mixed-media processes. Marco Manamperi’s digital works confront state and social censorship through unapologetic political critique. Rajani Serasinghe’s mosaic works respond directly to the question, “What was left behind?” using materiality itself as both subject and method. Her practice centres on broken, discarded and seemingly purposeless objects: fractured cups and saucers, shattered porcelain dolls, damaged chairs, once functional and part of domestic life, now reassembled into mosaics, transforming loss and rupture into sites of reflection and continuity.
‘Silenced’, supported by the Lionel Wendt Memorial Fund and ARTRA Magazine marks another ARTRA
venture to showcase artists who push boundaries.
See also:www.artra.lk/exhibitions
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