- Layla Gonaduwa unveils ‘Facing Maha’ at the Barefoot Gallery
The Barefoot Gallery, Colombo is hosting its first art exhibition since the most recent lockdown; “Facing Maha” by Layla Gonaduwa, which will open tomorrow (27) to the public.
On the eve of her private viewing, Brunch paid Layla a visit onsite at the Barefoot Gallery to learn more about this new exhibition, which draws on Layla’s travels around Sri Lanka last year as part of the Pro Helvetia artist residency. As part of this “on-the-move” residency, Layla, a self-taught interdisciplinary artist, travelled around Sri Lanka to explore the concept of memory, home, and migration, looking at the symbiotic and discordant relationships between/within communities and ecosystems.
When we arrived at the Barefoot Gallery, we found Layla hard at work with her team, placing her work within the space and deciding how she wanted it all to come together in the physical space. The Barefoot Gallery, as always, is a versatile space for contemporary art, and even though we visited the gallery far before it was ready for viewing, we could already tell that Facing Maha is going to be a magnificent exhibition once it is ready to show itself to the world.
We also sat down with Layla herself, seating ourselves in the iconic Barefoot Garden Cafe for a chat not just on Facing Maha, but on Layla’s 14 years (and counting) as a professional artist, how she found her artistic feet, and what drives her.
Becoming Layla Gonaduwa
Layla is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist, which is to say, she has no formal art training other than intermittent spells as a student at the Cora Abraham Art Classes, and that as an artist, she dabbles with all sorts of materials and media. “I’m very grateful for the term interdisciplinary artist,” Layla reflected, continuing: “Because I don’t know how else to describe my work. I work with so many different mediums. I try to stay away from such terms, but I admire postmodern work, from neo-expressionism to Dadaism to everything else, but at the same time, I also don’t know how to describe my own work as belonging to any particular school.”
Being creative was always an innate quality of Layla’s, with her sharing that she has always been creative in every sense, from her way of thinking, to how she approaches doing things. To her, it just seemed natural that her creativity would transcend into the visual. “I was also slightly dyslexic in school, so I had to be creative in how I looked at, explained, and understood things,” Layla explained. “Art helped me, I think. Looking back, I know now that being creative helped me to survive school and my childhood.”
As an adult, Layla found herself back at the Cora Abraham Art Classes, this time as a teacher, going on to become the Vice Principal, and nearly taking on the role of Principal before realising that she was more passionate about making art, and then making the switch to becoming a full-time artist.
Her very first collection of work was a collection of enamels, which was privately sold out. This was followed by small collections and projects; she was then invited by the Theertha Art Collective to be part of a collaborative installation with Fireflies Artist Network at the 2012 Colombo Art Biennale. Seeing how well her work was received, Layla was inspired to do her first solo exhibition, a collection of paintings and enamel work called “Dream Weaver” in 2012. Dream Weaver stood out because of its use of enamel work, with Layla saying: “It was quite novel for Sri Lanka at the time. Nobody had done enamelling in a large-scale exhibition.”
Dream Weaver has been followed by many more exhibitions, roughly one each year, although this is by no means a fixed schedule. We asked Layla which one of her exhibitions is her personal favourite, a question which had her at a bit of a loss. Explaining that her favourite exhibition is always the one she’s currently working on, she shared that her 2015 exhibition “A Quieter Place”, a mix of paintings and performance, was a personally significant one for her. “I was going through something life-changing personally, and A Quieter Place was a small solo exhibition at the Theertha Red Dot Gallery. It made me shed my past and go forward. At the time I was stuck in a certain place.”
Another significant exhibition for Layla was her 2016 solo exhibition “Angle of Incidence”, a collection of fibre and perspex sculpture, woodcut and print, paintings and installations. It is an exhibition she considers significant because it showed all the different sides of her and her personality.
‘Facing Maha’
Layla’s newest creative baby, Facing Maha, like all her exhibitions, is a collection of mixed media work. Explaining what inspired her with Facing Maha, Layla explained that she took the name Maha from the Maha monsoon season (typically December to February) because she was hoping to explore the concept of memory, home, and migration, and she planned her travels before the upcoming Maha monsoon keeping that in mind, and because almost any travel or migration happens around (or even because of) natural occurrences like a monsoon.
Facing Maha came to be as part of the residency programme Pro Helvetia, a residency programme awarded to three Asian artists each year by the Swiss Arts Council. “Normally, the artists leave their home cities and are placed in parts of Europe. I was initially going to Basel, Switzerland and my idea for the concept was in the form of memory and ongoing dialogue with regard to migration with the Swiss nationals residing in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankans living in Switzerland,” Layla shared. “But with Covid-19, this changed, and Pro Helvetia had a home-country travel option. I wanted to take it up so I changed the concept to suit my home country. I decided to see how I would respond to different places, people, and situations and how they, in turn, would respond to me.”
Over three months, Layla travelled around Sri Lanka, sticking mainly to the Western, North Central, North Western, and Sabaragamuwa Provinces, because of Covid-19 and to be able to easily return home should the need arise.
Facing Maha is the result of these three months of Layla’s travels around Sri Lanka. A collection of about 30 pieces of work that use a variety of media, Facing Maha captures examples of the kind of culture you just happen upon from places you might not expect. Part of the exhibition is a collage of photos from Layla’s journey (she maintained a blog of her travels) and some very individual acrylic on canvas paintings.
“There are also drawings that explain the concept of home and what people consider to be home,” Layla said. “Most of the time, home is the length of your limbs and the width of your cloth. It’s the area you’re comfortable with.”
Speaking on how memory plays a part in Facing Maha, Layla explained that while memory doesn’t play a huge part in the exhibition, a lot of her work is inspired by the stories she came across. Memories that have passed from generation to generation. “The exact truth of these memories is sometimes questionable, but at the same time, memory is a very powerful tool, and some of the stories I came across were mostly memories. For example, villagers who have left their original villages and resettled who shared stories of how that village was.”
Part of what makes Facing Maha different from Layla’s previous exhibitions, she explained, was the fact that it tells so many stories. “I’m a very cathartic artist, all my work is through first-hand experience. I had never travelled this way alone before. Your senses become sharper when you’re travelling alone. You feel you need to behave in X way and that you’re always being judged and watched and have to change yourself. The experience is very different, and so is the art that comes out of it.”
Layla’s take on ‘Facing Maha’
We asked Layla about her favourite story or memory from Facing Maha, and she told us about Fathima, the Muslim queen of King Bhuvanekabahu I of Kurunegala (1275-1277 AD). Fathima was one of Bhuvanekabahu’s lesser queens until she gave birth to his son Vathimi Raja, after which she saw a rise in her status.
Layla’s piece inspired by Fathima, Yakada Doliya, is a reference to the palanquins used by queens, with a golden palanquin being used by the king’s main queen, and lesser queens allowed to use less valuable palanquins made from common metal. Yakada Doliya examines what Fathima’s sense of comfort and home would have been as a Muslim woman (and queen) in a Sinhala-Buddhist court.
“I was a stranger to the land and the faith, so it was difficult to get the stories out,” Layla said, recalling how she went about collecting these fascinating stories. “My way of getting these stories out was to be quiet and just be present, building some form of trust so that the people you’re trying to speak to are willing to open up and let you in. To listen carefully. That was how I gelled with who I called ‘the spirit-keeper of Fathima’ and learned her story.”
Yakada Doliya, primarily an acrylic painting on canvas, harks to the form of the palanquin, imagining it in Arab motifs to pay homage to Fathima’s heritage, showing Layla’s idea of the kind of shawls she would have worn, imagining this shawl to be Fatima’s comfort, and harking back to Layla’s belief that the length of your limbs and the width of your cloth is your home, and your comfort zone.
With Facing Maha now ready for viewing, Layla shared that she is now looking to her favourite part of putting together an exhibition – sharing it with the world and showing them where she is coming from. “My exhibitions are a celebration of the work in a way,” Layla said, adding: “I’m glad and excited to be sharing them and I want you to be able to share in that joy.”
Layla Gonaduwa’s Facing Maha will be available for viewing at the Barefoot Gallery, Colombo from Wednesday, 27 October to Sunday, 21 November. The Barefoot Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
