‘The Foreigners’ exhibition by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka (MMCA Sri Lanka) closed on 22 October, after a successful six-month run at the museum located on the ground floor of Crescat Boulevard, Colombo 3. The show attracted 10,377 visitors, including 489 students from schools and higher educational institutes across the country.

Looking back at ‘The Foreigners’, the lead curator of the show Sandev Handy said, “My hope is that the exhibition helped begin a series of broader conversations not only on the relevance of contemporary art, but also on how the experiences of outsiderness, strangeness, and foreignness are in fact defining characteristics of our time.” He further expressed that, “The exhibition introduced a cacophony of voices which together testified to experiences that sit outside of, or depart from, neat and tidy attempts to conflate identity with nationhood or other reductive categories.”

‘The Foreigners’ displayed 19 photographs, performances, video artworks, installations, drawings, and paintings by 15 contemporary artists living and working in Sri Lanka, the United States, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The artists included Arjuna Gunaratne (b. 1976), Danushka Marasinghe (b. 1985), Dinelka Liyanage (b. 1994), Hema Shironi (b. 1991), Hania Luthufi (b. 1989), Imaad Majeed (b. 1991), Janani Cooray (b. 1974), K K Srinath Chathuranga (b. 1987), Nina Mangalanayagam (b. 1980), Reginald S. Aloysius (b. 1970), S.H. Sarath (b. 1947), Shyama Golden (b. 1983), Stephen Champion (b. 1959), and Sumudi Suraweera (b. 1982).

Two of the artworks displayed titled ‘வாசல்/ එළිපත්ත/ Threshold’ (Part 1) and ‘வாசல்/ එළිපත්ත/ Threshold’ (Part 2) by Dinelka Liyanage, Hania Luthufi, and Sumudi Suraweera of the Musicmatters collective, were commissioned by the MMCA Sri Lanka in 2021 with the support of the European Union.

These two works, along with ‘Lacuna’ (2009) and ‘Balancing Act’ (2012) by Nina Mangalanayagam, and ‘the impossibility of leaving / the possibility of coming out’ (2022) by Imaad Majeed were presented at the MMCA Sri Lanka’s first international art event held in London on 12 October. The event took place alongside London’s Frieze Week (11–15 October 2023) at and in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery London and presented these specially curated selection of video works followed by a panel discussion. “Partnering with The Photographers’ Gallery in London during Frieze Week was a tremendous success. The event was sold out and the response to the artists’ films surpassed our expectations,” noted Sharmini Pereira, Chief Curator at the MMCA Sri Lanka. She added that, “We are pleased to know there is recognition of our work in London, and to have been able to find a new audience of supporters as we stride forward with our plans to establish a new museum of modern and contemporary art in Sri Lanka.”

This event also gave the international audiences an opportunity to engage in the global discourses on migrancy, national and communal borders, and transnational identities in relation to ‘The Foreigners’. On this regard Handy noted that, “We always saw ‘The Foreigners’ exhibition as a way of placing a stake in the ground, marking only the beginning of what is a much larger global conversation both for the MMCA Sri Lanka as an institution, and perhaps more importantly for everyone on or connected to this island having to reckon with a stratified and exclusionary world divided by boundaries.”

As part of its Public Programming curated alongside exhibitions, the museum also curated 65 events including nine Gallery Talk, eight Workshops, five Reading Groups, 11 Curator’s Tours, 22 Exhibition Tours by Visitor Educators, three performances, a Book Reading for children, and an activation of Danushka Marasinghe and K K Srinath Chathuranga’s performance ‘Text-ing-Be-ing’ (2019) exhibited in ‘The Foreigners’.

Mounting an entire exhibition and opening it to the public for six months straight is a mammoth undertaking. Handy extended his gratitude to his team at the MMCA Sri Lanka, noting, “Looking back at this exhibition, I would especially like to recognize my colleagues from the MMCA Sri Lanka, who over the course of two years worked tirelessly and often invisible to help realise this landmark exhibition. Architect Jonathan Edward joined us to develop a careful and considered approach to the design of the exhibition space. Of our team members, Operations Manager Malshani Delgahapitya dealt seamlessly with all the complicated matters of operations and shipping, and Editorial Assistant Kaumadi Jayaweera and her team of Museum Associates worked on all the editorial and translation work that helped make the writing around the exhibition accessible.”

He further added that, “Pramodha Weerasekara, Curator Education and Public Programmes and her team developed a comprehensive, well rounded, and well attended series of Public Programmes. Our Gallery Manager Thariq Thahireen together with an incredible team of Visitor Educators were always welcoming and diligently speaking with every visitor who walked in, whilst juggling numerous events including the MMCA Afterschool programme.” Handy also said that, “This exhibition, like all our others, was supported by a multitude of individuals, too numerous to name. I think this is what it means to build an institution and thereby an infrastructure for the public benefit, by investing in the training, recognition, and support of people.”

All public programmes for ‘The Foreigners’ were made possible with the generous support of the European Union, whilst ‘The Foreigners’ exhibition was kindly supported by Anojie Amerasinghe, Hugues Marchand, Radhika Chopra, and Rajan Anandan, with additional support from the MMCA Sri Lanka’s Founding Patrons, the British Council, and Lite87. Generous support was also provided by the museum’s major benefactors and funders: John Keells Foundation, Nations Trust Bank, and Fairfirst Insurance.

The MMCA Sri Lanka is an education-led initiative that aims to establish a public museum dedicated to the display, research, collection, and conservation of modern and contemporary art for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public, schools, and tourists. Information about the museum and its exhibitions and public programmes can be found via its website www.mmca-srilanka.org, or on Facebook at facebook.com/mmcasrilanka and Instagram at instagram.com/mmcasrilanka/.