The children disfigured with burns from chemical showers sprayed from the sky; cities and entire generations of people decimated by nuclear bombs; suicide bombing of a church full of people during their Easter Sunday service; invasion and genocide in pursuit of power and creating mass exodus of citizenry. All this makes me think who the monsters are, and who the mortals might be.
Today is a world far apart from the monsters in our folklores and Grimm’s fairy tales. Today, looking at the topsy-turvy world where ‘alternate facts’ and ‘delusional megalomania’ remain prevalent, monsters cease to be those repulsive creatures from the mythical past, but an embodiment of all antithetical behaviors and beliefs that threaten ‘humanity and its ethical workings’ everywhere in the world.
Geocidal wars and promotion of mass murder to secure power, use of chemical warfare and nuclear weaponization, proselytising hatred and intolerance with little regard for humanity, perpetuate all the time almost as a matter of routine. This new monster has risen like a large elusive predator, mutating and corroding without mercy. The stark realisation so disheartening is that monsters are never created by themselves but come into being through our own imagination and actions. This is not merely a psychological entity anymore but remains rooted in the quotidian physical realm threatening the normal order of things, humanity’s way of life, and the familiar - turning all these upside down; creating a reeling world and abyss of vertigo.
Anoli Perera is a visual artist and writer. Her studies in Political Science, Economics and Sociology at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s were followed by a postgraduate diploma in International Affairs from the Bandaranaike Center for International Studies, Sri Lanka. Her art education came through part time adult education art programs at City College, Santa Barbara and Artworks, Princeton, USA.
Her work engages critically on thematics that range from women’s issues, history and myth to issues of identity, colonialism and post-colonial anxieties. Her works have been exhibited in Colomboscope, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2019; 4th Edition of Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India, 2018; Colombo Art Biennale, 2009, 2012 & 2014; ‘Artful Resistance’ Museum of Anthropology, Vienna, Austria, 2009 and Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt, Germany, 2010; ‘Separating Myth from Reality’ (Art Festival), Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan, 2002 amongst others. Her work was included in the exhibition, ‘Greetings from India’ organized as part of 5th Edition of Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival in November 2019 in China. She was invited to show at the launching exhibition of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sri Lanka, ‘One Hundred Thousand Small Tales’, 2019.
Her writings on contemporary Sri Lankan art has been published in a number of publications including Art Asia Pacific (Australia), South Asia Journal for Culture (Sri Lanka), Frontline (India), Asian Art Archive (Hong Kong), Society and Culture in South Asia (India) and numerous art catalogues and books on Sri Lankan art. Her book, H. A. Karunaratne published in 2019 documents the art practice of a master artist in Sri Lanka.
Anoli Perera is a co-founder of the Theertha International Artists Collective, a progressive art initiative based in Colombo. She currently lives and works alternatively in New Delhi, India and Colombo, Sri Lanka.
