Enter Mahen Chanmugam’s house and you will find it impossible to escape the scrutiny of Lord Ganesh. Lord of Beginnings and Remover of Obstacles, the elephant-headed son of Parvathi is everywhere: a dozen tiny Lords cast in metal observe you from their spot on the dining table and another one sits wreathed in incense by … Continue reading
Among the Zoroastrians, a small community united in their faith in the God Ahura Mazda, it is traditional to adopt one’s profession as a family name. This was why when Jimmy, the eldest son of a prominent Pakistani Parsi family, decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and study engineering, his surname was decided for … Continue reading
The flower casts a shadow, the rhinoceros kicks up dust; a tracery of thin veins appear just under the delicate skin of one petal, sharp thorns sprout from another sturdy stem. When people see Madiha Sikandar’s work for the first time, her first challenge often lies in convincing them it’s not ‘real’ – “I can’t … Continue reading
Laki Senanayake – painter, sculptor, architect, landscape designer, and inventor – is woken from deep sleep by someone tugging on his toe. There are strangers in his house and they have one question – can we see the garden? As he has so many times before, Laki says yes. Sri Lankans have long embraced Laki … Continue reading
Tissa Ranasinghe keeps his sculptures on a long, low table in his living room, shrouded in a white bed sheet. Under there, you will find the most unlikely companions – a faceless man astride a flying Garuda; a pair of lovers, entwined; a bull in a Red Indian head dress; the virtuous Kannagi and the … Continue reading
It keeps recurring – this conviction that I’m trapped in a comic book with my interviewee, a German who goes by the moniker ‘Nomad’. Taken anecdote by anecdote, the life of this Berlin-based street artist could easily be shaped to fit some alternate superhero myth. Consider all that flitting about Berlin by night and the … Continue reading
When artist Dumith Kulasekera found himself staring for hours into the eyes of his mother, he discovered it wasn’t an entirely comfortable experience. “That was the first time we were doing that actually,” he says of his decision to ask her to pose for him. Titled ‘(The) M-Other,’ it was in part a meditation on … Continue reading
