In The Crucible (1953), Arthur Miller's semi-fictionalised dramatisation of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93, Tituba, a native American slave woman, is accused of using herbs in the forest to make a “charm” equated to “blood” to perform witchcraft, conjure the dead, and force love. She enters a state of hysteria while confessing and the play ends with no mention of her aftermath. The eighth edition of Colomboscope, titled Way of the Forest reminded me of Tituba—the festival was a deep reflection on aspects of land rights, indigeneity and nation-states informed by hegemonic and disparate discourses of the nation-state, capitalism and patriarchy.

Curated by Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Hit Man Gurung, and Sarker Protick with the support of Artistic Director Natasha Ginwala and Assistant Curator Vidhi Todi, the interdisciplinary arts festival had a radical rigour that challenged patriarchal, deeply rooted hierarchies present in South Asia and its multitude of diasporas. This team comes with insights from their lands of contested histories, particularly, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Artworks installed at the JDA Perera Gallery, Barefoot Gallery, the garden of the Colombo Public Library, and the SNAFU project alongside Mushroomings—a series of public programmes—discussed ways in which being close to, and part of nature is innately intellectual and emotional—visible to the eyes yet made invisible through heteronormative, misogynistic ideologies of social, political and economic being.

At the JDA Perera Gallery, walking past the handwoven cotton cloths by Sri Lankan artist Barbara Sansoni (1928–2022), titled Peacock Flying in Yala (1968), felt like a seamless entry point for many Sri Lankans including myself who grew up appreciating the beauty of the island’s rich ecological systems ranging from the mountains to the rainforests to the coastal areas. In addition to the usual homages she receives merely for the beauty of her fabrics, her decades-long engagement with natural yarns to design and deliver was presented in Way of the Forest as a recognition of her intellectual prowess as an artist and textile designer.

In a similar yet less privileged vein to Sansoni, who built a community around her handlooms at the SNAFU Project, artworks by the Janakpur Women’s Development Center in Mithila, Nepal, have bold imagery of gender and caste-related oppression drawn from their daily lives. These commissioned paintings supported by Art Jameel in the UAE have evolved from the usage of plant and soil-based dyes to acrylic and poster paint to reflect on recent environmental and cultural issues that plague the Nepal-India border: rapid deforestation, lack of biodiversity and changes in farming practices. 

From the neighbouring land of Pakistan, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani of Karachi LaJamia take a more active approach using learnings from the experiences of women such as Sansoni and the Mithila art tradition, with their knowledge production and dissemination in eco-pedagogy. Their work is collective cultural research to mend relations with each other and the environment in Karachi. Their curricula, publications, walks and boat rides were recorded in their archival multimedia installation Ecopedagogy (2023), co-commissioned by Colomboscope and the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai. Rajani and Malkani spoke of the evolution of their practice at a programme aptly titled 'South-Asian Solidarities'—highlighting how the failures of the formal education system in Pakistan led them to build their own “nomadic space or anti-institution” to vitalise discourse about artificial interventions to Karachi’s wetlands.

In a performance and photographic series developed in collaboration with the Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care in Paris, Myriam Mihindou tests her capacity to heal herself of trauma using black honey, a natural element associated with mythical meaning in many lands in addition to her own in Gabon. Black Honey Manifesto or I am not a Foreigner in the Forest (2023) depicts human growth within the primary forest relying on the ecological chains of water, sky, plants, animals, and the sea. Mihindou spreads black honey over her face in an attempt to capture her close relationship with the forest, in search of a sensitive, caring and almost indescribable vocabulary.

The accompanying publication to the festival was of additional educational value to audiences with contributions by Anna Arabindon-Kesson, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, and Dr. Ranil Senanayake. Distributed for free, the publication reached many audiences that could walk into the publicly and freely accessible venues spread across the city of Colombo. Mushroomings that happened in addition to the artworks and publication was indeed addictive sprouting of dialogue, with performances, listening experiences, film screenings, workshops, reading groups and walks that were free and open to all members of the public. The festival’s main venue, the JDA Perera Gallery adjoins a building of the University of Visual and Performing Arts in Sri Lanka. The formal education sector of Sri Lanka often struggles to organise learning experiences of this nature for students, due to low budgets, lack of human resources and physical capital. Mobilising Way of the Forest in this building guaranteed access to art students with rarely resolved curiosities. The other venue SNAFU being within walking distance adds to this expansive notion of informal education through the arts.

The publication ends with a one-page note titled Desiderata, borrowing from the poem of the same name from 1927 by Max Ehrmann. This note is potent—as potent as Ehrmann’s advice to his daughter to avoid matters that “rouse [her] spirit painfully or unnecessarily.” Referring to the large-scale citizen’s movement Gotagogama, which was an attempt to remove corrupt leadership and promote just and fair governance in Sri Lanka, Colomboscope holds hands with the painful and necessary visions for inclusive leadership, mutual respect and equitable futures for Sri Lanka.

To directly quote the festival’s version of Desiderata, "Repressive systems must perish, and the massive calls for change resonate the world over. After all, 'What goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives.’” (from Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin).

Encountering Desiderata in the festival publication asks questions that plague the Sri Lankan contemporary art scene at present: How do artists respond to the social, political and economic situations around them? How do institutions make decisions responsibly? Most importantly, how do the arts keep going knowing that corruption, abuse, violence, threat and division are occurring as I type this question?

The eighth edition of Colomboscope was held across several venues in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from January 19-28, 2024.