Venues, each with a different rhythm for Colomboscope
Rhythm Alliances, the ninth edition of Colomboscope, opened on Wednesday, January 21 with a city-wide unfolding across four of the festival’s many venues, setting the tone for a festival attuned to listening, memory, and collective presence. Each of these interlinked venues carries a different rhythm through which histories, bodies, and geographies can be experienced relationally.
Colpetty Townhouse, the festival’s largest exhibition site, immerses audiences in sonic, cinematic and material practices that navigate grief, inheritance, migration and land. Through archives, field recordings, memoirs, and installations, artists map intimate and geopolitical histories –from handloom labour and plantation testimonies to matrilineal lineages and ceremonial percussion – invoking remembrance while gesturing toward alternative futures.
A creation at Barefoot Gallery and below, art enthusiasts at the opening. Pix by Akila Jayawardena
At Barefoot Gallery, performative gestures, ritual entryways, and rooftop activations bring together weaving, music, recitation, and ecological inquiry. Sonic frequencies paired with seismic data, sacred texts, bookmaking and textile practices form a sensorial theatre where human and more-than-human bodies coexist in cycles of continuity and care.
Housed in the historic De Mel Building, Radicle Gallery echoes Colombo Fort’s mercantile past. Artists engage urban archaeology, maritime histories, and architectural memory through choreography, sound, drawing, and textile drapes. Across its floors, works trace resonant frequencies—from abstract notation to choirs and ragas that move from lullaby to lament.
The opening culminated at the Rio Complex, a site long entwined with cinema, violence, and revival. Here, forgotten film worlds, cassette cultures, drumming traditions, and war-scarred landscapes converge, affirming Colomboscope’s enduring commitment to remembrance, resistance, and reimagined futures.
The festival brings together over 50 Sri Lankan and international artists working across sound, film, performance, textile, and installation. Among them are Aboothahir Al Wajahath, Dinar Sultana, Jegatheeswaran Keshavan, Jovita Alvares, Mahesha Kariyapperuma, Sarah Kazmi, Sabeen Omar, Mekh Limbu, Charwei Tsai, Zarina Muhammed, Pinaree Sanpitak, Haseeb Ahmed, Kaimurai, Tissa de Alwis, Moe Satt, Mohammed Ali Talpur, Naiza Khan, and Vaimaila Urale.
Running through to January 31, Rhythm Alliances offers a dynamic programme of curated tours, showcases, installations, and activations.
Full details and registration are available on the festival website: www.colomboscope.lk
Colpetty Townhouse: Involving remembrance and alternate futures
Radicle Cafe: Echoing Colombo Fort's mercantile past
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