- Home
- About Us
-
Art
- Artists exhibited with the '43 Group
- Events & Exhibitions
- Contact Us
PradeepChandrasiri is a product of the Institute of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Kelaniya, and is a prominent voice of the 90’s Art Trend in Sri Lanka. A founding member of the Theertha Artists’ Collective, Chandrasiri has widely exhibited his talents in painting, sculpture, installation art and theatre set design in Sri Lanka as well as Australia, USA, UK, Sweden, Japan and Austria. While engaged in his studio practice as a visual artist, he also works in the theatre landscape in design, and lectures on theatre set design across universities and schools in the country.
Chandrasiri’s art is deeply personal, and often autobiographical. The politics of his art are derived from his memories of the 1980s as a young man preoccupied with his own responseto the civil war in Sri Lanka, having himself been a victim of a torture camp. The role political violence plays in people’s lives has been a constant theme in his works, leading to commentary on deeper issues such as the angst of life and the agonizing fear of death. The agonised and disturbed male figure is a recurring figure in his paintings, as though he is struggling to free himself of the traumas of torture and violence. His 2004 painting “The Cardboard Hero” is one such example of this agonised, local hero wearing a cardboard crown, restrained and darkened by atrocities of the ethnic conflict. The black backdrop defines the figure of the hero, highlighting the dark psychology of his existence, while the brush strokes of yellow and red suggest a need to break free from the repression and anarchy of the monochrome. The hero, therefore, although made of cardboard, embodies severe psychological and emotional torment caused by the war alongside a desire to liberate himself despite a fear of death.
Chandrasiri’s signature creation “Broken Hands” is an installation that deals with the superstition surrounding the number 13. The personal enters when he identifies himself as a person born on the 13th day of a month, and delineates the distress he has thus far experienced in his personal life as a subject of the civil war via 13 panels that hold 13 broken hands in a funeral house. He uses the commonly available material of clay for the hands lying on wooden piles at different heights. As Sabine Grosser claims, using charcoal, oil lamps and betel leaves “he evokes impressions of local everyday culture which is not only limited to temples or museums.” In reference to the installation Chandrasirihimself said that the experience of creating and presenting it “was a reconciliation process, during which [he] tried to make sense of the conflict of which [he] was also a torture victim.” One of his more recent pieces of installation art is “Things I Told, Things Not Heard, and Things I Tell Now!” (2016) thatagain deals with the collective and personal wounds of war. A makeshift interrogation room and rubble is set in front of an enlarged black and white photograph of Chandrasiri himself, with a scar above his right ear. The installation, which was exhibited at the Aicon Gallery in New York at the Portraits of Intervention exhibition, highlights the photograph and the scar as remnants and memories of the dangers of the ethnic conflict that seem to be a part of the past. However, these remnants still require artistic questioning because memory is a part of what determines one’s identity, especially someone like Chandrasiri’s. His theatre set designs are also known to embody these aspects of war and how conflict can trigger existentialist thought, despite the scripted boundaries of a play.
| Name of Exhibition | Year | Place |
|---|---|---|
| Youth Awards Festival Exhibition of Art | 1995 | National Youth Center, Maharagama, Sri Lanka |
| Lalithakala: Painting and Sculptures Exhibition | 1995 | Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| State Art Festival Exhibition | 1996 | National Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Youth Awards Festival Exhibition of Art | 1996 | National Youth Center, Maharagama, Sri Lanka |
| Pitaweema-97: Convocation Day Exhibition | 1997 | National Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Broken Hand | 1997 | Heritage Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Exhibition of Painting | 1998 | Kandy Arts Council, Kandy, Sri Lanka |
| State Art Festival Exhibition | 1999 | National Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| No Order Group | 1999 | VAFA Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Artists for Peace: Flag Exhibition | 2000 | Selected Public Places, Sri Lanka |
| An Art Exhibition for Peace and Reconciliation | 2000 | Gallery 706, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| A New Visual Vocabulary in Contemporary Sri Lanka | 2000 | VolsparkEnschede, Netherlands |
| Four Artists: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture | 2000 | Lionel Wendt Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Four Artists: Exhibition of Painting | 2000 | The Havelock Place Bungalow, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Exhibition of Paintings | 2000 | Alliance Française de Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Crafty Thoughts | 2002 | University of Liverpool Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK |
| The Second Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial | 2002 | Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan |
| Serendipity – New Art from Sri Lanka | 2003 | The October Gallery, London, UK |
| Contemporary Sri Lankan Art | 2004 | G.T.Z. Office, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| AhamPuram | 2004 | Public Library, Jaffna, Sri Lanka |
| Black Cloud Wall | 2004 | Long Gallery, University of Wollongong, Australia |
| Contemporary Sri Lankan Art | 2005 | Museum of far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden. |
| Contemporary Sri Lankan Art: Artists for Peace | 2005 | National Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Arte Curioso | 2007 | Theertha Red Dot Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Images of Globalisation | 2007 | National Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Art of PradeepChandrasiri | 2007 | Theertha Red Dot Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Artful Resistance: Crisis and Creativity in Sri Lanka | 2008 | Museum of Anthropology, Vienna, Austria |
| Theertha – Works on Paper | 2009 | National Art Gallery, Male, Maldives |
| Imagining Peace, 1st Colombo Art Biennale | 2009 | Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Theertha @ 1 Shanthiroad | 2011 | Bangalore, India |
| (De)-inscribed Memories: PradeepChandrasiri and BanduManamperi | 2011 | Hempel Galleries, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Colombo Art Biennale | 2014 | Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Test | 2015 | Test |
Other Publicaitons the Artist has been mentioned in |
Ref :PC 7
Title :Night Over the Mountain (i)
Signed :Lower Right
Year :2008
Measurements in Cms :29 x 42
Material Used :Acrylic on Archival Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :29 x 42
Ref :PC 12
Title :Sky View (i)
Signed :Lower Right
Year :2008
Measurements in Cms :26 x 31
Material Used :Acrylic on Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :26 x 31
Ref :PC 14
Title :Untitled
Signed :Lower Right
Year :2008
Measurements in Cms :32 x 23
Material Used :Acrylic on Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :32 x 23
Ref :PC 2
Title :Whispering Mountain (xii)
Signed :-
Year :2013
Measurements in Cms :29 x 42
Material Used :Acrylic on Archive Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :29 x 42
Ref :PC 19
Title :Manna-IV.2013
Signed :Lower Left
Year :2013
Measurements in Cms :30 x 41
Material Used :Digital Print & Acrylic on Archival Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :30 x 41
Ref :PC 25
Title :Manna Series (xii), 2015
Signed :Front /Reverse
Year :2014
Measurements in Cms :29.7 x 42
Material Used :Print & Acrylic on Archival Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :29.7 x 42
Ref :PC 31
Title :Manna Series (xviii), 2015
Signed :Lower Right Front / Reverse
Year :2014
Measurements in Cms :29.7 x 42
Material Used :Print & Acrylic on Archival Paper
Dimensions in Cms. :29.7 x 42
Ref :PC 43
Title :My Shiva III
Signed :-
Year :2015
Measurements in Cms :155 x 150
Material Used :Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions in Cms. :-
Ref :PC 44
Title :The Secrete Palace III
Signed :-
Year :2015
Measurements in Cms :100 x 113
Material Used :Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions in Cms. :100 x 113
Ref :PC 45
Title :The Charcoal Mountain, Golden Sky and Interrogation Light III
Signed :-
Year :-
Measurements in Cms :100 x 113
Material Used :Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions in Cms. :100 x 113
Ref :PC 46
Title :The Selfish IV
Signed :-
Year :2013
Measurements in Cms :120 x 90
Material Used :120 x 90
Dimensions in Cms. :120 x 90
| Year | Institute | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Institute of Aesthetic studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka | BFA in Painting and Sculpture |
| 2003 | Postgraduate Institute of Archeology, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka | Diploma in Archaeology |