EXHIBITIONS in a PRIVATE COLLECTOR’S HOME

ARTRA Exhibitions 28 & 29 JUNE 2025 | COLOMBO EDITION

What if the future of art isn’t bigger and larger in scale, but more intimate and meaningful? ARTRA Experientials, a forthcoming series of exhibitions and art walkthroughs will be taking place in the intimate settings of private collector's homes in Colombo, including one on 28th Lane, Flower Road, Colombo 07. The private art salon experience presented here attempts to redefine how one can experience and engage with contemporary art, where art is not merely viewed on the walls of the space, but is something actively celebrated, critiqued and lived with.

Set in the home of a private collector on 28th Lane, Flower Road, Colombo 07, the series of exhibitions by ARTRA’s Emerging Artists Best of 2022 - 2025 collectively reframes the physical space of the home. Walls, entrances and exits become not only boundaries and passageways but also vessels for memory. These exhibitions transform physical space into a gallery of lived realities - where each room is a witness and a dynamic archive of one’s social, spiritual, and emotional lives. 

K. Mathismuar, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2022 presents his exhibition ‘Wounded Faith’ amidst a curated series of exhibitions by ARTRA’s Emerging Artists Best of 2022 - 2025. Turning inward, his latest collection critically explores the scars of ethnic conflict and religious chaos left over by the Sri Lankan Civil War, interrogating the cost such divisiveness has had on our post-war climate.

In striking parallel to K. Mathiskumar’s exhibit, the mixed media works of Malki Jayakody, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2023, continues the notion that physical environments can carry vestiges of ideology, conflict, and history. Her exhibition ‘Places of Persistence’ critically examines colourism by tracing its roots to colonial ideology. Centering the Sri Lankan landscape as a historical site of colonization, Jayakody challenges the constructed notion of the island as a ‘paradise’ and instead reframes it as a site of systemic erasure. 

Set in the home of a private collector on 28th Lane, Flower Road, Colombo 07, the series of exhibitions by ARTRA’s Emerging Artists Best of 2022 - 2025 collectively reframes the physical space of the home.

Moving from the power dynamics inherent to colonized land and labour, ‘Bordered Bodies‘ the latest exhibition of Mohamed Hathi, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2023, interrogates the dynamics of power and gender inherent to domestic spaces. Drawing from his observations in the East of the country, Hathi presents vignettes of patriarchal oppression and feminist resistance, capturing the daily struggles faced by women for their autonomy. 

Adding to Hathi’s exploration of discrimination and resistance, Rajani Serasinghe ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2024 uses the cyclical patterns of nature to reflect upon the resilience and transformation inherent to existence. Her exhibition ‘Impermanence’ acknowledges the natural impermanence of life. Her stunning mosaics poignantly examine the ever-shifting nature of existence and the strength of perseverance in nature. 

Finally, tying together the curatorial theme of the collective series of Emerging Artists’ exhibitions, ‘The Room’ an exhibition of woodcut prints by Venura Madurapperuma, ARTRA’s Emerging Artist | Best of 2025, investigates the bedroom as a site of memory and subjective human experiences. Touching on French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’, Madurapperuma explores the bedroom as a psychological terrain—a container of unique sensations, unspoken memories, and the quiet persistence of self. Referencing bold and emotive Expressionist aesthetics reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh, Madurapperuma’s series of woodcut prints wrap line, rhythm, and form to evoke a disorienting sense of isolation, anxiety, and desperate longing. 

Koralegedara Pushpakumara’s exhibition ‘The Brutality Within’ will be showcasing in Colombo this June. Debuting at Art Trail by ARTRA at the Galle Literary Festival in February earlier this year, his poignant exhibition of striking abstract works, which delve into the trauma of the Civil War, will be shifted from the historic walls of The Fort Printers, Galle Fort to Colombo for a time.

ARTRA Experientials in June will include “Will to Power” a solo exhibition by Kesara Ratnavibhushana, featuring a retrospective view of his photographic practice over the years.

Intersecting visual arts and literature, ARTRA Experientials will be a platform to launch ARTRA Magazine’s Women & Modernism Volume I Edition 69, on Thursday 26th June. This forthcoming edition of the magazine will explore Sri Lankan women artists who practiced in the mid 1900s in Sri Lanka with particular attention to Nalini Jayasuriya (1927 - 2014) and Swanee Jayawardene (1930 - 2010). These two artists were among eleven women who exhibited with the‘43 Group between 1943 and 1967. This edition delves into their lives and artistic practices, highlighting their significance within the modernist movement in Sri Lanka, while addressing the larger historical neglect and obscurity surrounding a lost generation of women artists whose contributions have been underrepresented in the literature of their time.

By situating critical, often underrepresented narratives within culturally resonant yet unconventional sites, ARTRA Experientials create intimate, reflective spaces for both artists and audiences. These interventions are not merely exhibitions, but are also acts of reclamation and reimagination, where art can provoke, question, and evolve beyond institutional confines. Here, away from the market’s glare, new ideas are given room to grow, and challenge industry norms.