Saturday Nov 08, 2025
Saturday Nov 08, 2025
Friday, 7 November 2025 00:10 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
From top left: Jezima Mohamed, Anura Krishantha, Chathurika Jayani, Bandu Manamperi, Bilaal Raji Saheed, Hanusha Somasundaram, Arulraj Ulaganathan and Irushi Tennekoon
Priyanthi Anusha’s performance artistry makes an imprint on the Matara Fort (MFA 2024)
The Matara Festival for the Arts (MFA) returns from 12–15 December, presenting a bold program, including new works that celebrate contemporary Sri Lankan art, heritage traditions, and community engagement. Six exhibits, housed at the Old High Court within the Matara Fort, will showcase batik, visual art, mixed media, installation art, stop-motion and mixed-media animation, film, and performance.
This year’s exhibit sees established practitioners working in partnership with rising artists in the field, as well as with MFA-trained Matara community artists – uniting them in collaborations, mentorships, and peer-to-peer groupings.
John Keells Foundation (JKF) – the CSR entity of the John Keells Group – has been with MFA since its launch in 2024 and returns once again for this second edition as its trailblazing Festival Patron and Art Patron. The initiative leads the way through the John Keells Group’s steadfast and growing commitment to empowering a healthy and progressive Sri Lanka by combatting social barriers, promoting dialogue, and supporting creative industries.
The India–Sri Lanka Foundation is an exhibit-specific partner this year in the tuk tuk mobile art project. The ISLF, set up by the Governments of India and Sri Lanka, aims to foster India–Sri Lanka relations through several avenues, including cultural cooperation, as demonstrated through their partnership with MFA.
Freelan Enterprises, a Matara-based leading exporter of spices, joins this year as a Friend of MFA. MFA is presented in collaboration with Sri Lanka Tourism, and proudly, Wijeya Newspapers is MFA’s exclusive print and digital media sponsor.
Exhibit 1: Art Ambassadors of the Road – Tuk tuks as canvas for cultural and community transformation (Visual Art)
Sri Lanka is home to over 1.2 million tuk tuks that serve as a vital form of personal and commercial transport, supporting the daily activities and livelihoods of countless families.
This project transforms tuk tuks into mobile canvases, as leading contemporary artists collaborate with community artists, community members, and tuk drivers themselves to reimagine tuk exteriors and embed them with narratives that reflect the history, heritage, and lived realities of Matara. Through an artistic lens, the project shines a light on the dignity and societal contribution of tuk drivers and highlights the community-building and innovative potential of this transport that is often taken for granted.
This exhibit reflects the regional history and ties of tuk tuk art too – thanks to support from the India–Sri Lanka Foundation, Bengaluru-based artist Dushyantha HP will be based in Matara for several weeks to contribute to the project. Dushyantha is an artist of the 1ShantiRoad Studio, Bengaluru, which first worked in 2010 with Sri Lanka’s Theertha Artists Collective, of which Prof. Jagath, Anura, and Bandu are leading members.
Exhibit 2: Adaraye (Everything Is Love) – Batik, painting, mixed media
“Adaraye” showcases new art that reflects the role of love, care, and support in shaping artists’ creative journeys – whether from family members, team members, or like-minded collaborators who sustain an artist’s creative practice and life’s journey.
Veteran Matara-based batik artist Jezima Mohamed, aged 85, continues to push the boundaries of her craft with the detailed and multi-dimensional storytelling of the work she has crafted for the show. Chathurika, a Colombo-based mixed-media artist, integrates her own layered, textural approach with batik-inspired techniques for the first time, combining contemporary practice with heritage craft.
The knowledge of batik was brought to Sri Lanka from Indonesia via Dutch colonists. Initially practised as a hobby among elites, it eventually became more widely adopted and formed a vital cottage industry supporting livelihoods across the country. While more than 240 batik businesses are registered with the government, the overall number is likely much higher, with over 200,000 – primarily women – employed in the industry. Batik has been the art form of choice in creating national and regional flags, highly valued decorative adornments in spaces such as Parliament and architecturally iconic projects, while designer batik wear often represents Sri Lanka on both national and international stages.
Exhibit 3: Rooted – Histories of the Malaiyaga Tamils (Documentation and Contemporary Art)
‘Rooted’ presents the 200-year history and cultural identity of Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaga Tamil community across the country, including in Matara.
This exhibition highlights significant historical themes of the Malaiyaga Tamils, tracing their arrival, major political events, struggles, and achievements – all of which have shaped and defined the rich histories of the community.
For the Matara Festival for the Arts, ‘Rooted’ will include an exhibit of contemporary artworks addressing themes of displacement, dignity of labour, and the struggle for the certainty of land and home.
By combining archival material, oral narratives, and artefacts from the Tea Plantation Workers’ Museum in Gampola with contemporary artistic expression, ‘Rooted’ will engage festival audiences in understanding members of their own community, fostering empathy, and mobilising community solidarity to become allies in ensuring long overdue promises to the Malaiyaga community are delivered.
Exhibit 4: Love in the Time of Memory – Installation with paintings, ceramics, mixed media
This immersive installation uses painting, ceramics, and mixed media to explore how memory shapes our understanding of the past. Each artist examines childhood, family histories, and inherited experiences – presenting memory as active, layered, and revisited.
Arranged within one of the Old High Court’s main courtrooms, these artworks engage viewers spatially. Using memory as a practice and love as a technique to give rest, the installation invites viewers to read slowly and accept partial illumination.
Exhibit 5: Creativity Kade – Relational art installation
The “Creativity Kade” reimagines the traditional village corner shop as an interactive, life-sized installation. Visitors can ‘shop’ at the kade, and with each purchase, they can select a ‘creative fortune’ from the till and follow a creative prompt that encourages imagination and triggers individual and collaborative acts of creation and play.
At scheduled times, the kade’s shop window also transforms into a puppet theatre stage. The shop’s community game area rounds off its activities for social engagement.
Through interactions with the kade, visitors become active partners in transforming the space into a hub for play, community-building, creative participation, and cohesion.
Exhibit 6:
a) Countdown: 37+ one-minute films by independent filmmakers – curated by the Barefoot Gallery
The first iteration of Countdown brings together a burst of stories across genres and techniques – narrative, animation, experimental, and performance art – crafted by Sri Lankan artists from across the island and beyond.
b) The Animate Her Series by Irushi Tennekoon – Stop-motion and mixed-media animation
The Animate Her Series features animated interviews of seven inspiring women working in diverse fields of the arts, sciences, and technology in Sri Lanka. The series is written, animated, and directed by Irushi Tennekoon and was initially funded through a grant from the British Council’s Creating Heroines program.
