The Ancestral (Un)Dress:
The Crafty Objects of Pala Potupitiya

-- Jagath Weerasinghe

Contemporary Sri Lankan sculpture began in the mid-1990s to evince signs of
change from the 'modern' ideals and tenets of art making.  In the hands of
a few 'thinking' artists, our sculpture has now reached a stage that
challenges and confronts art audiences in ways never done before.

The new works are remarkably different from what has come to be known as
'Sri Lankan modern sculpture,' which, I would argue, has shown its highest
creativity in the recent works of Tissa Ransinghe. Ranasinghe has
successfully formulated a sculptural idiom very much Sri Lankan in many
ways, culled as it is from the western modernist tradition. Sri Lankan
'modern sculpture' otherwise has become trite, hackneyed and contrived in
the hands of sculptors that came after Tissa Ranasinghe, due to their
uncritical use of the sculptural 'manners' manifest in the works of Pablo
Picasso, Henry Moore and of Tissa Ranasinghe.

In refreshing contrast to this dire state of affairs in the field of
sculpture, some of the younger artists who graduated from the Institute of
Aesthetic Studies of the University of Kelaniya from mid 1990's on, as well
as recent graduates from the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts, spark a new life
and dynamism to Sri Lankan sculpture. This is a dynamism that manifests
itself along the many avenues of creative investigation into the various
themes, histories and traditions of art making and the building of an
identity.

The art scene thus emerging is very much un-modern as it renounces the idea
of universal beauty and the meta-narratives in which modern thinking in art
is deeply rooted. This current trend in Sri Lankan painting and sculpture
may seamlessly and historically be termed 'para-modern' rather than
'post-modern,' as its 'un-modernness' has neither developed out of a
complete exhaustion of modernist idioms nor from a social-cultural
background that gave rise to a post-modern condition.

It is against this backdrop of historical development that one can place
and examine Pala Potupitiya's works that appear more 'craft objects' than
'high-art objects,' Pala's works scandalize the established notions about
the 'art object' by consciously blurring the hierarchical borders between
art and craft. A 'border' and a 'framing' that has its roots in colonial
ideology and perhaps in the thinking of the anglicized bourgeoisie that
emerged in the 19th century.

Pala has art/craft/ed a series of astonishing, glittering, colorful, and
wearable headdresses. What he accomplishes in these works is the
duplicating or copying of the accouterments of Southern ritual dancers, the
tradition of Bali, into which he has been born, and almost made to leave
behind.

Nevertheless, it can also be suggested that what he has done in these works
is the reinventing of the traditional dancing gear with the discarded
materials, the 'junk' that litters the roadsides and seabeds, of urban
culture such as ballpoint pens, clips, and similar plastic bric-a-brac that
gleam a glitter to them.

The objects thus created while simulating traditional dance gear, also
claim a meaning and life of their own due to their new materiality. This is
also due to the fact that Pala, the producer of the objects is a product of
an established art institution which dwells in the discourse of 'higher
education' that demands respectability.

As such Pala's construct becomes 'an original' on its own terms, while
confronting the established attributes of being 'original' within the
discourse of 'art'. The process of assigning and or claiming the status of
'original' and 'art' (as opposed to 'craft') to Pala's objects gets even
more problematic as the traditional headgear of the Southern dancers, from
which Pala had made his headgear, remains an 'original' as well.

What is outrageous here is that we have two 'originals' that look quite
similar to each other. However, as indicated above, the traditional
headgear and that of Pala's become two different objects from each other as
they claim two different kinds of histories and traditions. What we see
here, I would say, is the formation or the formulation of a new kind of an
art object that consciously makes an effort to position itself outside of
the status quo of the 'high art culture' of Colombo while making every
effort take its place astride it.

What has happened here then is that Pala's works, striving hard to claim
the status of 'original', have lent themselves to the birth of another
'original'! This show is a unique contribution to the contemporary
para-modern visual art practice in Sri Lanka. The show confronts us with,
and then debunks the idea of the 'original' and the 'copy'. Perhaps the
most important sign of change in the show is that Sri Lanka art audiences
are in need of a paradigm shift in their thinking about art.

_________________________________________________________________________

Jagath Weerasinghe
Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology
407 Bauddaloka Mawata
Colombo 7
Sri Lanka
Phone: (1) 694151 (Office) / 865900 (Home)