- Hashan Cooray’s latest exhibition contrasts mainstream media
Travelling during the night on resource-gathering skirmishes, local artist Hashan Cooray tears off posters from the walls that form the city. He then takes images and text and adds them to his oeuvre of materials. Through a series of canvases, poster prints, and video art, “Stick No Bills” – his latest exhibition – presents the artist’s experience of navigating the worlds of commercial advertising, political propaganda, and social critique by contrasting media headlines with a set of vibrant colour palettes that also reflect the traditional CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key) colour printing sequences of modern print media.
Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1987, Hashan Cooray pursued a career as a visual artist via unconventional means of self-learning, courses in fine art, and his experience as an Art Director in the advertising industry. Hashan Cooray has presented his work in group and solo exhibitions at George Keyt Foundation (2010, 2017), Imago Mundi Publication (2016), Lab Rats, Art Space Sri Lanka (2017), Parahumans, SGG (2019), Nawakalakaruwo, JDA Perera Gallery (2019), and Desire, SFG (2020). He is currently the Art Director of Phoenix Ogilvy Sri Lanka. His works belong to private collections in Sri Lanka, Spain, the US, New Zealand, and India.
In conversation with Cooray, he told us that with his art, he aims to present a truthful vision of the reality of what it is doing to us as a society and individuals. “While it may be overwhelming, the chaos can be an insightful experience, for the vibrant absurdity may provide the answers to our questions,” he shared, adding that what matters is how we take steps to approach and encounter it – from a quiet, meditative, and contemplative space reminiscent of the artist’s way of making, being, and looking at the world.
Underlying the technical aspects, for Cooray, lies the necessity of exploring the impact that excessive multimedia propaganda has on the psyche of an individual. Talking about the exhibition itself, he told us that it explores how these factors all partake in the waves of noise that permeate the collective consciousness, as each attempt to define and determine the Sri Lankan identity. “As a result, the underlying bloodlust of this island is laid bare in the scraping away of these posters that are reminiscent of the frenzied throes of wild animals,” he described. During our conversation, Cooray also raised questions like: What kind of legacy are we leaving behind? “We risk that the history we write will be constantly overwritten and replaced in this process,” he told us, explaining his inspiration behind his collection.
In “Stick No Bills”, Cooray’s latest body of work, he focuses on a selection of posters stripped from the public walls of Colombo. The sourced images, taken from their original posts, illustrate a critical mixture of politics, consumerism, and social critique and eventually make their way to his digital and painted canvases. Here, they move from one type of public display to another, filtered through his discerning gaze as they become interwoven with the pigments of his iconic portraiture work.
Cooray strongly believes that artists have a responsibility in spreading their concepts into the public sphere. These ideas, in turn, may be reviewed by a critical audience, as they could be dishonest or inadequate. However, when it comes to public identity, he told us that the vast output of culture and politics leaves little choice but for a relentless cacophony of voices to be discharged into everyday life. The posters in question are often layered upon each other over days and weeks, to be slowly – but not wholly – disintegrated over time by the humid climate of Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, these weathered façades provide a rich visual feast for the eyes and mind as fragmented images and words overlap one another, with each element vying for attention in the no man’s land of public space. Cooray’s selection of poster material includes headlines and bodies of text that question passed laws and failed policies that include education, labour, the environment, poverty, militarisation, and misconduct.
Cooray told us that he presents these works in the silent, contemplative space of the art gallery, in total contrast to the clamorous places they initially abide in. The exhibition, reflecting his creative process, is a meditation among the flurries of thought embodying the constant stream of consciousness that makes up urban life. Using portraiture as a medium to reflect these particular materials can be seen as an attempt to balance the idea of strength through identity with the underlying violence inherent in its desire to do so. “Images are glued to a wall, only to be removed and then replaced; as the cycle repeats itself, neurosis is revealed as the psychologies that we are forced to contend with appear to be trapped in a perpetual state of distress and unrest,” Cooray described, when talking about why he decided to exhibit his posters.
He further told us that “Stick No Bills” engages with political critique and social upheaval as the artist translates an irrepressible sensory experience: a dissection of political messaging and the hypocrisy that barely lies beneath the surface and threatens to overflow at a moment’s notice. By embracing the confusion they provide, Cooray presents a truthful vision of the reality of what it is doing to us as a society and individuals.
