‘Rhythm Alliances’ opens 9th edition of Colomboscope

Saturday, 7 February 2026 01:35 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Michelle Therese Alles

The ninth edition of Colomboscope opened with a preview evening at The Colpetty Townhouse recently.

Titled ‘Rhythm Alliances’, the festival was conceived and curated by guest curator Hajra Haider Karrar along with Colomboscope Artistic Director Natasha Ginwala and her team.

Centred around sound, rhythm, and collective memory, the event brought together over 50 artists including musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, and collectives for an extensive program of exhibitions, performances and public events across the city.

This year’s edition positions rhythm as a shared cultural language that carries expression and renewal. The opening event introduced audiences to a landscape drawn from ritualistic drumming and healing rites, along with oral and sound practices rooted in Sri Lanka, as well as drawing inspiration from wider Asian and African musical and cultural traditions.

Drumming, in particular, is positioned as both a historical tool of defiance and a contemporary language of collective expression, recalling its suppression during colonial plantation systems and its enduring role in spiritual and social life across the island. The works explore how sound travels across generations, how suppressed rhythms resurface, and how traditional forms of knowledge continue to endure amid rapid technological change.

Festival venues included Barefoot Gallery, Colpetty Townhouse, Kamatha at BMICH, Liberty by Scope Cinemas, Musicmatters, Radicle Gallery, the Rio Complex and Soul Studio.

Events and exhibitions took place across these locations, with most programs free and open to the public, while selected events required prior registration due to capacity limits.

Colomboscope Artistic Director Natasha Ginwala noted that the 2026 edition was among Colomboscope’s most diverse so far, with works unfolding across exhibition spaces, sound environments and live performances.

“Dedicated to listening, remembrance, and renewal, Rhythm Alliances endeavours to resonate with sensory intelligence and reciprocity,” she added.

Berlin and Karachi based guest curator Hajra Haider Karrar reflecting on the curatorial approach, said: “Reverberating across generations and geographies carried by the oceanic flows, the ninth edition is an invocation of rhythmic transmissions. The different formations of sonicity by the tongue, body, and its encounters experienced in the artistic provocations are initiations into the layered architectures of sound and resistance. Here, the voice, musicianship and aesthetics of the handmade converge in motion, crafting a language that liberates even as it remembers. Within these resonant gatherings, rhythm asserts its agency, a pulse that speaks, insists, and transforms.”

The preview at The Colpetty Townhouse marked the start of a program that explored rhythm as both an artistic and social force influencing collective experience and interaction.