Text

Numbed: Art of Bandu Manamperi

17 October to 9 November 2009 at Red Dot Gallery.

Bandu Manamperi’s first art approach entered the society with the Made in IAS exhibition. That was with his powerful work “Instant Nirvana Private Limited”. This work received international and local attention.  Organized under Jagath Weerasinghe’s curatorial intervention, Made in IAS showcased the art reflecting the discourse of  90s Trend.

After the Made in IAS exhibition, Bandu’s art manifested as performances. Performance art emerged within the art practices supported by the 90s Trend. Being one of the initiators of performance art in Sri Lanka, Bandu Manamperi  remains as one of the leading performance artists active at present. As a performance artist, Bandu Manamperi explores three themes.  One is to highlight critically the oppressive cultural believes or practices forced upon woman that continuously prevailing in the male-centric society looking at the whole issue through a humane position. Another is to present through sensitive performances the individual’s pain in a war ridden society and its extreme anxieties. The other  is to interrogate critically, the  extreme religious interventions and blatantly extremist behavior of the state through political and sometimes witty performances.

This time, through the visual art exhibition at the Theertha  Red Dot Gallery, Bandu Manamperi engages in finer and deeper socio political issues. The visual motifs that Bandu suggests for this process are of three types in their basic appearance. The fist type is a visual-form that shows an expression ‘instantly frozen’ made from a mold taken from his body. This form is covered with different textured surfaces and hung at an elevated position from the floor. The second type of form is more flexible, similar to a skin without any texture. This can be suggested as the primary form that exists before putting on different textured surfaces as coverings. It is presented in the gallery space as limp form. The third type of visual form that Bandu presents in the exhibition is his own performance. Bandu’s attempt through this exhibition is to say that the individual  in a society ware different cultural/ political coverings as protective membrane over one’s own natural covering, the biological skin while  finding comfort and security within it. That is, the individual would put different coverings representing extremists and obsessive positions reflective of religion, history, nature, patriotism, self absorption, independence and media. This is done in relation to or in supportive of the relevant cultural and political environments.  Bandu suggests, that such tendencies in this complex political, cultural religious moment has restricted each other’s integrity and ideologies.

These socio-cultural  currents are influenced and dominated by a powerful political dialogue. This can be explored and elaborated further. That is that the first cultural covering is politically more innocent. The subsequent  coverings tend to be more political, and therefore not so innocent. Bandu articulates that in subtle political moments, all those social phenomena are experiencing a morbid relaxation, uncritically and in an exonerative manner. In other words Bandu suggests that all these social phenomena have succumbed to the common denominator, the total state sponsored ideological discourse.

The current exhibition  shows a direct connection to Bandu’s earlier works.  In his earlier work Bandu , primarily a performance artist has used his own body as the artistic form and built different textures on its surface. In this exhibition, Bandu uses his body as well as textured surfaces and works toward a singular objective.

Prasanna Ranabahu
13 October 2009

Translated by Lalith Manage

In Pictures: “Numbed”, Exhibition on sculpture by Bandu Manamperi

by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai

“Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb ~ Jean Arp or Hans Arp-German/ French Sculptor . (September 16th 1886-, 1886 –June 7th 1966)

“Numbed” –Exhibition on sculpture by Bandu Manamperi’s exhibition of sculptures is currently being held at the Theertha Red Dot Gallery in Pitakotte. The exhibition began on October 17th 2009, and it will end on November 9th 2009. The Theertha Red Dot Gallery is a contemporary-artist- run gallery, and first of its kind in Sri Lanka.

A series of exhibitions are lined up for Theertha Exhibition Season. Seven sculptures are displayed- named “Skin” and “Numbed”. They are elevated from the ground level, hung by the top of the heads with steel rods; the figures look frozen and rigid. He has used rubber and fibre to depict various situations of mankind. Bandu Manamperi uses variety of techniques to explain his thoughts.

He is a founding member of the Theertha International Association, a visual artists group based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has participated in several exhibitions held in Sri Lanka and abroad. His exhibition is absolutely an unusual experience in the Sri Lankan contemporary art scene.

Lost in The Maze by Sasanka Perera

(Sasanka Perera, a professor of Anthropology at Dept. of Sociology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka)
 
 
 Left: Gallery view of the exhibtiion 'Maze' by Bandu Manamperi and G.R. Constantine held at the Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

November 2006.

The Context

What came to my mind when I saw ‘The Maze’ during its opening night were the

opening words in Lawrence Langer’s 1996 essay, ‘The Alarmed Vision: Social

Suffering and Holocaust Atrocity.’ Even though talking of another context,

Langer’s central concerns are also central to the foundational ideas of ‘The

Maze.’ Langer noted that “until we find a way of toppling the barrier that

sequesters mass suffering in other regions of the world from the comfort and

safety we enjoy far from its ravages, little will be done to rouse the attention of

our political or professional leaders, to say nothing of our own. Domestic calm

encourages distancing from foreign pain.” The relevance of Langer’s words

would become apparent when we pay attention to the ideas and local

experiences that gave genesis to the ‘The Maze.’ ‘The Maze’ is a collaborative

performance art and installation art project by Bandu Manamperi and G.R.

Constantine that was hosted by the Theertha International Artists’ Collective at

the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery from 2 nd to the 5 th November 2006. Writing the

conceptual clarification upon which the basic premises of ‘The Maze’ was based,

Anoli Perera made the following observations in the catalogue produced to mark

the event:

“Ours is an anesthetized society. We are oblivious to the other’s pain.

We have lost our capabilities of either empathizing or sympathizing.

The weapons of “mass instruction” give us the view of a distant theater.

Our living rooms become the safe pavilions for watching far away wars

and killings. We are the cheering spectators.

We have found psychological mechanisms to justify our collective

amnesias and have anesthetized ourselves to block out traumatic

experiences of the society.

Once we are in this world of decadence, we lose all rationality where

priorities get misplaced and extreme emotions govern the order of the

day.

This is the maze we have entered into” (Theertha 2006).

 

 Left: Artists Bandu Manamperi and G. R. Constantine in a performance during exhibition opening.

Right: audiance attaching flowers to installation as a participatory activity.

If Langer was talking of a situation in which pain and suffering in far away places

were not perceived in the comfort zones of the West, ‘The Maze’ was referring to

similar situations of loss, destruction, pain, chaos and collective amnesia in our

own context. As this review progresses it would be self-evident that Langer’s

critique is not structurally any different from the critique of the two Sri Lankan

artists. Manamperi’s and Constantine’s visual narrative is not merely an

unusual art project in the Sri Lankan context but also a powerful critique of the

social and political currents in our midst at the moment, which has also been an

uncomfortable aspect of our reality for a considerable period in the recent past.

This is why a review of ‘The Maze’ has to be located within the wider context of

contemporary Sri Lankan politics. Both artists are amply qualified to comment on

the issues of destructive politics and their consequences that they have opted to

comment on. One has been very familiar with the politics of loss and destruction

in the North while the other had similar experiences from the South. For both

artists, what they were commenting upon through their art was a part of their

lived reality from the past that they were also seeing in the present. Both

represented the contemporary visual art trend now known as the Art of the

1990s , which as a movement has a serious preoccupation with the politics of

violence in their art. On the other hand, both are among the handful of wellknown

‘performance artists’ currently in the country who identify themselves as

such. Performance art, which has not captured much imagination and attention in

Sri Lanka, is essentially a process of art where visual artists such as painters opt

to use performance as their main method of art-making while often making the

body itself and its movements as the object of art. Installation art on the other

hand, is more commonly seen in contemporary art events in Colombo. It

combines different elements that sometimes include paintings and sculpture to

formulate and construct a site-specific artwork that would often cease to exist at

the end of the exhibition period.

In this sense, ‘The Maze’ actively combined a very visible installation and a

staged performance by the two artists. It was exhibited at a time when the issues

it beacons us to ponder over have become central issues in our society while the

kind of amnesia that it attempts to critique are also clearly at work.

Structure of ‘The Maze’

‘The Maze’ as a work of art constitutes of a number of elements: the central

attraction is an area, a veritable comfort zone of a living room with luxurious

leather sofas and chairs, a coffee table stacked with newspapers and television

screens flashing ‘news’ from around the world. Encapsulating this area almost as

a cocoon is a somewhat surreal domain filled with life-size mannequins and body

parts with medicated bandages covering most parts of the bodies. Large reams

of surgical gauze stretched from one injured body to another and from one

injured limbo to another, making an intertwined, hospital-like, sedate, scary and

surreal socio-scape. This is the maze. Exterior to this installation, a stereo was

blaring out the sounds by now very familiar to this kind of socio-scape where the

end results are death, injury and destruction: police and ambulance sirens,

machine gun fire and racing vehicles. As the main component of the staged

performance itself, mingling among the crowd, G.R Constantine was offering

artificial red rose buds to visitors making a request to pin them on any of the

curtain-like pieces of gauze they could reach. Deconstructing the notions of

superficial and commercialized love that red rose buds are nowadays supposed

to indicate in this area of globalized velentinism, these rose buds were supposed

to symbolize the many dead and injured in the Sri Lankan civil chaos. While

some did what was excepted of them, may opted to take the artificial rose buds

home perhaps to be used as a memento of the exhibit or more likely as yet

another dust collector in the standard middle class living room cabinet. At the

same time, Bandu Manamperi was selling the sounds of our times already being

played in the background recorded on CD for Rs. 100.00 apiece, perhaps

indicting the monitory value of death, destruction and uncertainty. Both artists

had their hands wrapped in ‘benzoin’-doused gauze and bandage.

On the one hand, the artists were interested in commenting on the death and

destruction amidst ourselves. On the other hand and more importantly, they

were also commenting on how fast these issues become mere distant realities

for those people not immediately touched by this chaos. It was not too long ago

that the battle for Sampur and Mavil Aru and the early spectacular military

successes in the most recent bout of choreographed violence between the Sri

Lankan armed forces and the LTTE enthralled many individuals who were glued

to their television sets as if they were watching a series of war movies. It is

precisely in this kind of context that television programs bring into our living

rooms news bulletins, live coverage of events, experts’ commentaries and

interpretations, candle light vigils of professional protestors and so on that we

can watch in comfort and security while enjoying our evening tea or scotch as

they case might be. It is that same comfort zone that we too become military

experts and political pundits making our own trivial opinions that would make no

difference to the people who are directly at the receiving end of violence. We

have become cheering spectators of our own destruction not really fathoming

what is actually going on. That is essentially the crux of the narrative that the two

artists were narrating. They hoped that the people who entered the Lionel Wend

Gallery while the exhibit was on going would go into the mock living room,

browse through newspapers and watch television while being relatively oblivious

to the sounds and scenes of destruction evident in the overall structure of the

maze. Some did exactly this. But others had a more attractive distraction on the

opening night. The wadai, helapa, sandwiches, soft drinks and beer available to

visitors at one corner of the gallery proved to be a highly successful attraction in

the context of which the awe of the destruction and the depth of narrative that the

very vocal exhibit was attempting to narrate was drowned and marginalized from

the collective vision and perhaps the conscience of the spectators. It was quite

clear that consumption had the capacity to subvert senses of many of our

citizens. Constantine and Manamperi were hoping this would in fact happen that

would further prove their point.

In addition, as part of the national security regime currently in place in the city,

the Police Department on its own accord had mounted its own performance to

augment the work of the two artists. They were diligently ensuring that no car

was parked outside the gallery, and in fact hardly allowed individuals to slow

down their vehicles. When the rain poured down it appeared that the constables

abandoned their performance indicating perhaps that their script contained an

MOU between the government and the LTTE that no bombs would be

transported, installed or exploded when it rains. When taken as performances

however, the impromptu performances of the Police Department and the hungry

public were more dynamic in making the arguments that the two artists were

attempting to articulate than the staged performance of the artists itself.

It almost appeared that rather than a mere commentary on the politics of our

times, the artwork of Manamperi and Constantine was a scaled down simulation

of our times, politics, collective stupidity and structural amnesias. Indeed we are

in a maze where reality is not seen for what it is. In that maze, television would

always be the purveyor of fabricated news as truth and we would be the

spectators. We were enthralled by the movie serial, ‘Battle for Sampur’ and are

still talking about the latest blockbuster, ‘The Murderer of Raviraj’ without really

knowing who the director might be. In the comfort of our living rooms, these are

mere flickering moments that do not touch us while we would hardly ponder to

think about those directly involved, touched and hurt. This evening we might

watch a protest march on TV against disappearances and killings in the city. But

we need to go to bed early as we have to go to UK in the morning on the cut rate

tickets offered by Sri Lankan Airlines. We are indeed in ‘The Maze’ and would

seldom see any reality other than our own inverted realities.

Published in The Island, 15 th November 2006.