Two examples from Sri Lanka in the
context of post-conflict reconciliation
Janaka Samarakoon participated at the
French-Sri Lankan Diaspora Youth Workshop “Post-War Reconciliation Dialogue for
a Sustainable Peace”, which took place in Paris, on October 27th, 2012. He
participated as a panelist on the theme “Building inter-communal
dialogue/understanding through the arts and culture: an alternative approach
towards reconciliation”.
The event was organized by What’s Next!,
an independent forum comprising of post-graduates and young professionals of
Sri Lankan origin residing in France. What’s Next! seeks to promote a
sustainable peace in Sri Lanka through intellectual exchange and multicultural
dialogue.
| by Janaka Samarakoon
( November 21, 2012, Paris, Sri
Lanka Guardian)
Speaking about the capacity that art may have to contribute to a social
achievement like building sustainable peace or national reconciliation goes
somewhat against the tide of the Western contemporary art. This approach could
easily be perceived as naïve in the context of today’s contemporary art whose
only defining criteria seems to be its degree of transgression. I think this
situation is a result of an art that I would like to define as “reflexive”.
What do I mean by “reflexive art”? It is an art which is wholly preoccupied by
its own matters and which expresses nothing but itself; it is a form of art
whose means and subject are nothing else but art itself. It is the affirmation
of “formal art” and the logical outcome of the so-called revolution of the
“Modern” artists of the 19th Century that we call the historical avant-garde.
But art that I would like to take into
account here is of another sort: one which assumes a social role in its
thinking and its execution. Attributing any sort of “social responsibility” to
Art could be negated as an anachronism and an outdated attempt in the Western
thinking. My effort could also be interpreted as one, which is based on the
so-called “modernist meta-narratives” of the past, which are considered to have
failed in quite a spectacular manner during the first half of the 20th Century.
It is the failure of the Modernist discourse which might have paved the way to
Post-modernism. Furthermore, after the downward spirals that we can observe
during the first half of the 20th Century when art tried to cultivate liaisons
dangereuses with politics (in one hand, the avant-garde was repressed and
banned and on the other the role of the artist was reduced to that of a civil
servant), affirming that art still serves social causes is a risky thing. But
I’m keen on to take up that risk.
The sort of art that I’m going to defend
here is an art, which reflects not only itself (if it did not at all, it will
be anything but art) but also the context it emerges from. It’s a form of art
which is deeply rooted in its time and its social reality. Those who produce
this art analyse the status quo of their time and space through their artistic
production and sometimes even take the opposite stance of the prevailing thinking
when this latter becomes condemnable. Some of these artists demand also an
active participation from the part of the public in the process of thinking and
execution of their art.
I’m going to bring up two examples from
Sri Lanka in order to illustrate the idea of how art and culture can be used as
an alternative path in the peace-building process. One of the examples is set
in the conflict era, back in 1997, while the other is set in the post-conflict
period.
The first example is an installation by
the Sri Lankan artist Chandragupta Thenuwara. The work is his emblematic
“Barrelism”. Thenuwara coined the term “Barrelism” from the word “barrel” in a
period where this object played a crucial role in the subconscious of Sri
Lankan people. During the war period, from a simple utilitarian object, the tar
barrel turned into a symbol of oppression and an attitude, which undermined
civil liberties. At that period, the barrels were put alongside the roads to
form security barriers in front of which people were required to undergo
identification controls. Moreover, these objects were painted in highly
aggressive commando colours and camouflage patterns which, in contrary to the
camouflage context — the battlefield and the forest — stood out eminently in
the urban areas with an irrefutable chromatic aggressiveness. Thenuwara
literally brought these barrels into the space of the art gallery, which was an
unprecedented and audacious artistic gesture in the local context of art. In an
approach, which has its references throughout the history of modern art,
ranging from Marcel Duchamp to Andy Warhol, from Pop Art to Minimalism,
Thenuwara elevated these unusual objects to the status of a legitimate work of
art. From then on, “Barrelism” became the centrepiece of his oeuvre and an
ambassador of those that the war and its direct and indirect results had
asphyxiated. This work of art made by a Sinhalese artist did not have any
ethnical identity though. The only identity it had was that of the oppressed.
People from different ethnic and religious backgrounds could identify
themselves in this piece of art. One day or the other, every civilian had to
queue up in front of a barrel barricade and let her body-checked by military
personal. The coherent programme of awareness that the artist tried to achieve
through his work of art was unquestionable. Before seeing the barrel within the
space of the art gallery, people seemed to have accepted this strange yet
threatening object as something almost organic of their “natural” environment. But
from the moment Thenuwara displaced the object and placed it in a new context,
people started to realise how much their democratic and civil space had been
compromised by this foreign object and by extension by the contentious
situation that the object so eloquently symbolised. With his work, Thenuwara
incited people to actively participate in the process of peace building.
The second example that I am bringing
forward is a film by the Sri Lankan director Ashoka Handagama : “Ini Avan”. The
Tamil title of the film is a pun. “Ini avan”, when written separately stands
for “the man, here after”. As one word, the title means “the beautiful man”.
The film is an articulate example to affirm as to how cinema can operate as a
means of understanding the “other” and of social reconciliation after a
disastrous civil conflict. The film directed by the Sinhalese director is shot
in Tamil language, in the Northern area which was torn apart by the civil war.
The film itself is an important landmark of Sri Lankan cinema. It is an act of
great courage — and a risky one! — from the part of the director to claim to
have a deep understanding of a culture other than his own. The film is the
narrative of an ex-LTTE soldier who, after the war, comes back to his native
village and tries to be integrated into a “normal” life within his community.
During the wartime, though, the man had recruited young people from his village
by force. Now, no youth among those recruits has survived. Only the protagonist
has made it to the post-war era. Thus, he is condemned to survive the
catastrophe and to live with his own demons and with the ghosts of his past.
The film is about the difficult integration of a man into social norms, after
having lived in a parallel reality.
These kind of artistic experiences,
which, beyond ideological, ethnic or social differences, appeal to our human
intimacy, are undeniable and invaluable assets during a period of national
reconciliation. While allowing us to probe into our own inner self, this kind
of work help us open ourselves towards the “other” in an unexpected way. I
reckon that formal education or deliberate awareness programmes would take much
more time than art to accomplish such deeds.
Directly or indirectly, all forms of art
– both “reflective art” and “social art” which formed the dichotomy that I
opposed – may all but enlarge the reflexion of Man and uphold her humanness.
Art may also attribute the individual a critical gaze towards life and society
and make her more sensitive to the beauty of life. Furthermore, art may show us
the complexity of human condition, its ambivalences, dialectics and
ambiguities. Thus art can make people aware of the universal values such as the
spiritual fulfilment and the respect of the “other”. Those are for sure valuable
assets during a peace-building process.
[Janaka Samarakoon holds a
Masters' Degree in Art History from the Ecole du Louvre, Paris. He is currently
conducting a series of research on Sri Lankan contemporary art. He runs his own
business in the industry of web site design and development.]
