EXHIBITIONS

Here and There

Group Show - Curated by Chandraguptha Thenuwara 23 - 29 Jul 2026 Here and There is the inaugural annual exhibition showcasing Sri Lankan artists living abroad whose practices remain deeply connected to the country’s social, political, and cultural realities. Featuring Annette Fernando, Kirushan Sivagnanam, and Anupa Khemadasa, the exhibition explores memory, identity, displacement, and transformation through diverse contemporary artistic practices. Read more

Stories from a Wandering Mind

Alex Stewart 2 - 18 Jul 2026 Stories from a Wandering Mind – A Retrospective show by Alex Stewart

Working in the bustling creative centre of London in the 1970s, Alex Stewart (b. 1958) had no idea that a meeting with a colleague named Maya Ratwatte would change the trajectory of his life and art.

Maya and Alex became great friends and through this friendship, he met Dominic Sansoni in London in 1980. When Maya returned to Sri Lanka in the early 1990s, she invited Alex to visit her family home in Kandy. Arriving for the first time in 1993, Alex fell in love with the people and the landscapes, incorporating their natures and colours into his paintings. Maya’s home and family became his base from which he travelled around the island for many years.

Soon after, he visited Barefoot, and met the incomparable Nazreen Sansoni, who had just founded Barefoot Gallery two years earlier alongside Dominic. Alex was offered a space in the gallery to show his paintings. Over the years, Alex travelled, even spending time painting at the home of Mitty Lee-Brown, a doyenne of the Australian art world living in Nilaveli on the northeast coast. The artist was in the country during much of the civil war and later during the tsunami – elements from these life-changing moments alongside the overstuffed lorry, the tuk tuk, the angel in the blue sari, or the couple under the ceiling fan, created a beautifully illustrated visual history of Sri Lanka for over 40 years.

Alex Stewart began painting after a difficult period in his life. He found peace in art making and storytelling, as well as catharsis in working with symbolic figures and themes. Sri Lanka is one of many chapters in his life to be found in his works, but its character maintains a presence, whether in pattern or plant life depicted on paper.

“The cast of characters expand and contract, changing colour, shape and meaning. All is in flux, but each painting seems so specific. Yet when looked at the following day can convey something very different. The meaning is in the eye of the beholder, and theirs to explore.” - Alex Stewart Read more

Memories of Yaalpanam

Catharina Danial 30 Apr - 23 May 2026 "Time can make a feeling fade but the memory of a first love never fades away." - Samuel Timothy McGraw

‘My art is a representation of the beauty of my home, Yaalpanam-Jaffna. Through my work, I recollect my lived experiences of Jaffna before and after the war, and how it changed over time. I recreate them through landscapes. I translate my memories into works addressing the vividness of childhood recollections- Though faded, they hold significant emotional value.

My work employs collage and mixed media as a conceptual framework to explore memory and heritage. The palette dominated by earth tones and monochromatic hues creates an antique, nostalgic atmosphere that invites reflection. Through layered textures and subtle gilding, the works reconstruct Yaalpanam, not as a static relic, but as a living, evolving memory. The exhibition aims to offer viewers an immersive encounter with this reimagined Yaalpanam, encouraging personal reflection and dialogue. My intention is to create a space where the audience does not merely observe, but emotionally interacts with the work.

This exhibition expresses the essence of Yaalpanam as I experience it - a blend of nostalgia, resilience, and beauty. My practice is rooted in archiving: the homes, kitchens, daily lifestyles, traditions, and histories I have witnessed and inherited. I cannot return to those days, but through my art, I keep them alive.’

- Catharina Danial Read more

Tree of Life

Padrig Morin 16 Apr - 16 May 2026 Padrig Morin amalgamates symbols – Celtic from his native Brittany in France; Buddhist and Hindu from a lifetime living, working and researching in Sri Lanka. In recent years, his art draws parallels between ancient cultures across continents and histories.

The Tree of Life is a universal symbol, but it occupied a central place in Celtic beliefs and worship. It symbolises the connection between Heaven and Earth, mind and body, the physical and spiritual, the seen and the unseen. Ancient Celts believed trees were the ancestors of men. For Padrig, it is an act of re-appropriation, reclaiming, or re-signifying cultural symbols, forgotten or erased by the Christian religion or by the dominant culture. The persistence of an intuitive or atavistic memory links modern Celts to the memory of their ancestors, reflecting a vision in which the tree acts as a fundamental bridge between people, nature, and the sacred.

Other symbolic elements included in Padrig’s works are birds, dogs and numbers, as they intimately blend with certain aspects of the tree of life. Birds are sacred messengers between the natural and supernatural worlds. They often represent deities, signifying wisdom, protection, and the souls of the departed. Dogs are symbols of loyalty and protection, associated with healing gods - their images found at shrines throughout the ancient Celtic world.

Padrig Morin paints civilisations’ contentions with the spirituality of symbols and the power they hold over us. His work also speaks to a loss of cultural identity, through his own experience growing up in France, where the Breton language and its Celtic roots were overshadowed by French national language and culture beginning several centuries ago.

Symbols represent ideas that keep traditions alive. In Padrig’s paintings, we see the yearning for invigorating those symbols once again, drawing on their power to connect people and spiritual practices throughout the world. Read more

ஈசல் Mayfly

Ponnaiyah Peter 2 - 25 Apr 2026 Growing up in the Vanni region during the early stages of the war in Kilinochchi, Ponnaiyah Peter was surrounded by the natural beauty of the land, but also by fear, displacement, and destruction. As a child, he experienced the chaos of war and these experiences deeply influenced his artistic journey. In contrast to joyful events, the war brought dark and complex experiences.

Clouds do not have a fixed position or place. The wind never allows them to stay still in one location, and their journey never ceases. This fleeting, changing quality resonated deeply with Peter and became a recurring symbol in his art. Dark clouds represent emotional responses linked to the deep losses he experienced during the war, which is why these formations are central to his work.

Swarming mayflies emerge from the ground during the rainy season and gather around a
source of light. Unaware that their lives last only for a single day, they move joyfully around the light. Eventually, they lose their wings and move towards the end of their short life. This cycle is a powerful metaphor for Peter. In the midst of war, people lost their identities and lands and were forced into an uncertain future. Through the symbolic form of the insect’s wing, he attempts to make a comparison about these experiences and his own memories. His work seeks to evoke reflection upon memory, loss, displacement, and impermanence. Read more

Alakhshya: One that cannot be perceived

Druvinka Puri 5 - 28 Mar 2026 We are all artists of consciousness, creating our “pictures” of reality. The enduring quest to find the ultimate reality and meaning of the universe merges human scientific discoveries with a spiritual longing for ultimate truth "an unchanging dance of existence beyond time and self" - Druvinka Puri

Born in Sri Lanka and living in the Himalayas in India, Druvinka is a sadhu who practices the ancient occult traditions in India. She has spent over two decades developing an intuitive practice exploring human experience and transcendent realms. Among the first artists exhibited by Barefoot Gallery Colombo, she creates atmospheric canvases in layered washes of greys, blues, sepia, and ochre, often mounting Nepali bamboo paper to form symbolic compartments of karma. Her smaller works draw on the religious symbols and landscapes of her Indian home, forming an ongoing spiritual quest expressed through art. Read more

Neighbours dancing in my garden

Prasad Hettiarachchi 5 - 28 Feb 2026 Barefoot Gallery Colombo is delighted to welcome back Prasad Hettiarachchi, as he continues his inquiry into Sri Lanka’s rapidly changing landscape in his latest solo exhibition, Neighbours Dancing in my Garden.

Centred around ongoing developments across the island, his practice examines the exchange that takes place between those acquiring these lands and those who are displaced as a direct result of it. Read more

RHYTHYM ALLIANCES

Colomboscope 21 - 31 Jan 2026 Rhythm Alliances is an exercise of attunement to the varied dispositions of rhythm—energizing, contrasting, haunting, recurring, turbulent, and imagined. Far more than a static exhibition, it is a celebration of energies and experimental forms. Since experiencing rhythm-making is also an invitation for time-travel, the acts in this edition assemble a communal score of creation, resistance, and alliance-building. Involving over 50 artists and collectives, musicians, choreographers, filmmakers and cultural organizers, the festival programme will continue its pluriversal journey across freely accessible venues in Colombo.

The ninth edition of Colomboscope draws on a range of vocabularies embodying rhythms of remembrance, dissent, and renewal. From the noise of a global order where hyperconsumption and war are rife, how may sonic counter-currents transmit the ingredients of struggles today, make paradoxical realities audible, echo in the lifeways of migrant belonging, and resonate shared dreaming? Across live experiences and exhibited works we will also explore the role of listening in producing relationships of reciprocity and engage with the ways in which acoustic leakages and vocal atmospheres compose new public territories that refute borderlines, data harvesting, and oppressive systems. Read more