ABOUT ARTIST

Namal Kumara (b. 1991) is a Sri Lankan visual artist and educator whose practice bridges contemporary studio work and art education.

Raised in a family that valued craftsmanship, community, and service, Kumara’s artistic journey was shaped from an early age by his mother, a skilled traditional mat weaver who was also his first art teacher. Her knowledge of traditional craft fostered in him an appreciation for material, texture, and cultural heritage. His father, a dedicated missionary worker, further shaped his outlook through an emphasis on compassion, community, and service.

Kumara pursued a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University of the Visual and Performing Arts, graduating in 2016. His studies provided a foundation for the development of his artistic practice and his exploration of contemporary visual expression. Since then, he has participated in 26 group exhibitions, contributing to Sri Lanka’s evolving contemporary art landscape. His work was also selected for the Imago Mundi publication by the Benetton Foundation in 2016 and is held in several private collections in Sri Lanka and internationally.

Kumara’s practice engages with questions of identity, gender, human relationships, power, and social structures. His works are characterised by a vivid, angular, and geometric visual language.

His first solo exhibition, Nanththi Go Samithan Dhanan, presented at Paradise Road Galleries, examined a social system sustained by the labour and suffering of the proletariat. Drawing on the bull as a recurring metaphor, the series offers a Marxian examination of power, politics, and class, envisioning the possibility of the working class challenging established structures of authority.

Within the works, coloured abstraction becomes a site of contestation, while burnt canvas and soot give physical form to an otherwise invisible proletariat. Their presence is marked by hardship and deprivation within a fragmented political system. Yet the series also carries a sense of optimism: its vivid and bold colours gesture towards a future in which the working class might move beyond blind servitude and reclaim agency over their own lives.