SP Pushpakanthan

Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah was born in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. He completed his Bachelor in Fine Arts & Design from the University of Jaffna (2014). Pushpakanthan received the prestigious South Asia Studies Fellowship at Cornell University in 2018. More recently, he has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Essex (forthcoming) where he is going to engage further with the ESCALA Collection.

Pushpakanthan’s drawings, paintings, digital prints, videos, and installations reflect the painful and often silenced legacies of Sri Lanka’s lengthy civil war while also tackling globalisation's dark sides: racism, populism, inequality, and ecocide. He has exhibited widely, including in the US, the UK, Canada, Iran, India, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. His recent solo exhibitions are Wounded Landscapes, Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo (2019), The Disappearance of Disappearances, History of Art Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2018), Disappearance, Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo (2017), Inequality, Paradise Road Gallery, Colombo (2016). His select two-person and group exhibitions include When Memory Lives, Artscape Young place, York University, Toronto (2018), Living on the Margins, Brunei Gallery, London and Park Gallery, Nepal, Sapumal Foundation, Colombo (2018), SAF (Virtual)- Future Landing, Serendipity Arts Festival, India (2021), Look Stranger, Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2019), Five, Baik Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2019), A cross-section, Jaleh Gallery, Tehran (2019), Crossing Place: Contemporary Art from Sri Lanka, Baik Art Gallery, Los Angeles CA (2019), Conceiving Space: Colombo Art Biennale, Colombo (2016), C/A/M/P- Contemporary Artists’ Meeting Point, Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo (2016), Shadow Scenes: Colomboscope, Colombo (2015), Seven Conversations, Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo (2015), and The SAARC Artist Camp and Exhibition of Paintings, National Art Gallery, Maldives (2013).

For Tonight No Poetry Will Serve Pushpakanthan continues with his work addressing the ravages of war in the triptych titled Wounded Landscape 2020. In these drawings, once more the artist attests to the condition where life is disrupted, ruptured, broken and families are torn apart by indiscriminate acts of violence committed during war.

Pushpakanthan is currently on a Fulbright Scholarship pursuing his MFA in Studio Art at the University of Illinois- Chicago (UIC). He lives and works between both Chicago, USA and Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.