Fashion Meets Art at Colombo Fashion Week to Celebrate the Collaboration

Art Connect returns for its 5th edition with 6 of Sri Lanka’s most acclaimed artists under the theme ‘Co-Liberate’

Celebrating its 15th year since inception, this season of HSBC Colombo Fashion Week will see the 5th edition of the collaboration between fashion and art – CFW Art Connect will see six important artists work with fashion designers to create unique pieces under the theme ‘Co-Liberate’ to express their unique point of views in their medium. Art Connect is an interesting canvas for both the designer and the artist to work together and explore this environment.

Art Connect will be the first of the series of events during the week of CFW taking place on the 19th of March 2018 at the Laksala Building in Fort with an invitee-only evening of art appreciation, the exhibition will be open to the public on the 20th of March.

“Co-Liberate’ represents the coming together of Art and Fashion while breaking past the limitations imposed by the two fields. Each artist will create 05 works each to be exhibited. In addition, one of these five works will be inspired by one of the Colombo Fashion Week designers.

The artists selected for the exhibition this season are:

Mahen Perera – Mahen explores in-between aspects of materiality and the realm of detritus in society. The materials that he works with take on the traces of history, time and memory as a result of transformative physical manipulation. Thus, engaging the conventional language of sculpture and expanding forms to unravel aspects of identity, communal memory and representation.

Pala Pothupitiya – Pala’s work mainly confronts issues such as colonialism and nationalism extending his inquiry to questions of caste, the distinction between art and craft, tradition and modernity, as well as generating a critique of Euro-centrism. Pala’s work spans many media and he is well known for the map-works.

Sujeewa Kumari – Sujeewa in her most recent artworks, comes to terms with de-realized memories derived from history, tradition, and reality of daily life, to formulate a compelling artistic synthesis of new cultural images. She prefers working with a range of different media, such as drawing, painting, photography, performance, and installation.

Pradeep Chandrasiri – Pradeep belonged to the 1990s wave of artists who occupied the contemporary visual art landscape of Sri Lanka, who produce work that integrated a contemporary socio-political ideological vision and interrogative practice. Chandrasiri’s work explores socio-political violence as experience, embodiment and memory/memorial.

Koralegedara Pushpakumara – Koralegedara was part of the No Order group established in the 1990s and is one of the early artists of the 90s trend. His work expresses the socio-political existence in post-war Sri Lanka.

Kavan Balasuriya – Kavan’s work explores the correlation between language and identity in Sri Lankan art and the relationship between impermanence, negative space, and metaphorical shadowplay.

These renowned artists will work with the following designers to inspire one of their works: Mahen and Dimuthu Sahabandu; Sujeewa and Upeksha Hager; Pradeep and Conscience, Pushpakumara and Darshi Keerthisena; Kavan and Catherine Rawson. Together they will create a unique expression inspired by the designer’s collections.

HSBC Colombo Fashion Week is enriched by its partners, each partner has been an important stakeholder and contributed in a significant and a relevant way to make this journey important and effective with their support and efforts. HSBC is the Title Partner, Hilton Colombo is the official host hotel,  Ponds BB+ as the Official Beauty Partner, Audi is the Official Automobile Partner, Hydration partner is OLU Tropical Water, Wineworld.lk as the Official Lifestyle Beverage Partner, Ramani Fernando Salons as the Official Hair and Make-up Partner, Vision Care as the Official Eyewear Partner, Hameedia, Serenia Residences as the residences partner, Leo Burnett Sri Lanka and MSLGROUP Sri Lanka as the Official PR Partner, We Are Designers as the Website Development Partner and Emerging Media as the Outdoor Digital Media Partner – all who share and extend their support towards the vision and aspirations of CFW.

For further details, please visit www.colombofashionweek.com or follow CFW on Facebook

(www.facebook.com/colombofashionweek), Twitter (@colombofw) and Instagram (@colombofw).