“A cool blue haven, an imagined realm of serenity,a paradise that soothes souls scorched by the harsh summer of the worldly realm;a tranquil spring of purity,an eternal solace granted for a fleeting moment,a legacy of life in its purest form.”
Anavatapta proposes an imagined world beyond affliction a landscape shaped by the possibility of life held in balance.
Drawing on the mythological lake of Buddhist and Hindu traditions, the exhibition reconfigures an inherited cosmology through Chathurika’s visual language. The lake is not presented as a literal paradise, but as a conceptual space where the spiritual, natural and imagined converge.
Rooted in Sri Lankan cultural and ecological memory, the works bring together the Buddha, makara thorana, blue water lilies, red and white lotuses, dragonflies, bees, elephants, fish and other forms of plant and animal life. Rather than simply illustrating a mythological world, these elements construct one an environment in which different forms of life exist alongside one another.
Within this landscape, the desire for health, freedom, beauty and an existence without fear or illness takes visual form. The lake becomes a space in which life is imagined not as something continually threatened, but as something that can be sustained.
Anavatapta occupies a space between belief and invention. Its mythology provides a point of departure, while its deeper subject is contemporary: the human desire to imagine conditions under which life might be lived differently.
The lake becomes a mirror not of an existing paradise, but of a possibility projected onto the world. It offers a space through which another relationship between life, nature and existence can be conceived.
Anavatapta is, ultimately, not a destination. It is an act of imagining.
Drawing on the mythological lake of Buddhist and Hindu traditions, the exhibition reconfigures an inherited cosmology through Chathurika’s visual language. The lake is not presented as a literal paradise, but as a conceptual space where the spiritual, natural and imagined converge.
Rooted in Sri Lankan cultural and ecological memory, the works bring together the Buddha, makara thorana, blue water lilies, red and white lotuses, dragonflies, bees, elephants, fish and other forms of plant and animal life. Rather than simply illustrating a mythological world, these elements construct one an environment in which different forms of life exist alongside one another.
Within this landscape, the desire for health, freedom, beauty and an existence without fear or illness takes visual form. The lake becomes a space in which life is imagined not as something continually threatened, but as something that can be sustained.
Anavatapta occupies a space between belief and invention. Its mythology provides a point of departure, while its deeper subject is contemporary: the human desire to imagine conditions under which life might be lived differently.
The lake becomes a mirror not of an existing paradise, but of a possibility projected onto the world. It offers a space through which another relationship between life, nature and existence can be conceived.
Anavatapta is, ultimately, not a destination. It is an act of imagining.
