A Reading Path Down a Rabbit Hole: Chandraguptha Thenuwara

Saskia Fernando Gallery

With sculptures you can connect with people physically, whereas with a drawing it is through the mind.

Blinds: Pandol | 2021 | Acrylic on Canvas | 70 x 90 cm

How do we deal with beauty? Whether it is a beautiful truth or an ugly truth you must present it in an artistic form, in your own language. I am the kind of person where my final work is aesthetically appealing, but when you dig into the work, then you start to read the motives and associations. You sit in that situation; you think and rethink as a citizen about your responsibility in society and as to why you have been blind.

Blinds: Hope | 2021| Acrylic on Canvas | 92 x 153 cm

Open Magazine

…Chandraguptha Thenuwara still remembers the group of men stopping the bus in Colombo and clambering on. They went from passenger to passenger, insisting that he or she say the Sinhalese words for pen and bucket— ‘pena’ and ‘baldiya’. Tamil tongues would contort around these syllables, making it easy for the assailants to distinguish one Sri Lankan ethnic community from another. Thenuwara, who is Sinhalese, was passed over. Others who struggled with the pronunciation were dragged off the bus to meet uncertain ends. The vehicle was waved on.

Barrelscape, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE, 2022

The unrest had spread, and now smoke was rising over Colombo as rampaging mobs set homes and businesses alight. Thenuwara wanted to see what was happening for himself, and he set out to walk from Colpetty to the predominantly Tamil neighbourhood of Wellawatte, a distance of some 5 km along Galle Road. “It happened in front of me. I can’t forget what I saw,” he says. “Wellawatte was burning.” All seemed to be anarchy, but the police stood by as the mobs wrecked vengeance and leaders were seen directing these attacks with the aid of electoral registers.

Witnessing, 2026, Oil on Canvas, 183 x 122 cm, 72 x 48 in

When Thenuwara returned home in the 1990s, he found a country at war with itself, being transformed by encroaching militarisation. His response was to mount a challenge. In 1997, he held his first exhibition to commemorate Black July….Seemingly fearless, this artist’s outspoken critique of war, human rights abuses, militarisation, censorship and authoritarianism has seen him cast by his critics as unpatriotic and anti-national.

Neo Glitch - Landscape II, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 27 3/5 × 36 1/5 in | 70 × 92 cm

He is perhaps best known for Barrelism, a series of paintings and installations inspired by the streets of Colombo when they were thick with military checkpoints.

Saskia Fernando Gallery, 23 July - 23 August 2023

World Socialist Web Site

With my barrels I seek to provoke people’s minds and raise civil consciousness to question the war and make them actively participate in the efforts to stop the war.

Camouflage Shades. Acrylic on canvas. 2004. 92 x 122 cm. Photo: Thushantha Rathnayake

As any other painter, I liked to sketch from my childhood. The existing education system and the social value system was bent on destroying the artist in me by pushing me forcibly towards the science stream.

title :Untitled, Signed :Reverse, Year :1995, Measurements in Cms :100 x 149, Material Used :Acrylic on Canvas