Pala Pothupitiye
Born in 1972 in Deniyaya (Sri Lanka)
Lives and works in Mullegama (Sri Lanka)
Pala Pothupitiye obtained his degree in Fine Arts from the Visual and Performance Art University in Colombo. Raised in a village of traditional southern Sri Lankan craft-artists and ritualists, his work incorporates and reinterprets the material and philosophical content of traditional art. Pothupitiye confronts issues such as colonialism, nationalism, religious extremism and militarism, and extends his inquiry to questions of caste, the distinction between art and craft, tradition and modernity, as well as generating a critique of Euro-centrism. In 2005, he was selected to participate in the third Fukuoka Triennial at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, and in 2010 he won the jury award of the Sovereign Art Asian Prize, Hong Kong. At present, Pothupitiye is living and working at the Mullegama Art Center near Colombo where he runs his workshop and an art school, supporting younger artists and schoolchildren.
In his installation for the 2017 Karachi Biennale, Pothupitiye addresses the lingering detrimental effects of British colonialism on South Asia. In this work, he narrows in on two colonial legacies: tea and education. The British colonizers popularized tea both in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The artist states, “Today tea is considered to be something soothing, refreshing. Locals and tourists alike perceive the plantations to be idyllic places. Few give much thought to the massive environmental destruction they have slowly caused over the centuries. Nor do they consider that the workers on these plantations do not benefit equally from the industry.” Similarly, the artist sees the Sri Lankan educational system as still beholden to a colonial mindset. He believes Western colonial rule institutionalized its oppressive power through its schools. In his work, contemporary tea bags are used to decorate a degree cloak with the intention of generating a focus and discussion on the negative colonial influences that still prevail in South Asia.
