LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka, the first comprehensive survey of Sri Lankan art organized by a U.S. museum. Drawn in part from LACMA’s collection of Sri Lankan art, and including numerous domestic and international loans, the exhibition presents some 240 works addressing nearly two millennia of Sri Lankan history. In 2009, Sri Lanka emerged from a nearly 30 yearlong civil war fought along ethnic and religious divides. The Jeweled Isle presents a timely exploration and celebration of a geographically complex, ethnically diverse, and multicultural South Asian hub.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Robert L. Brown and Dr. Tushara Bindu Gude, of LACMA’s South and Southeast Asian Art Department, and is designed by Los Angeles-based architecture firm Escher GuneWardena Architecture.
“LACMA has a long history of collecting South and Southeast Asian art and its Sri Lankan holdings are more expansive and diverse in range than those found in any other U.S. collection,” said LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan. “These works are at the heart of this exhibition.”
According to the exhibition curators, “Sri Lankan culture developed in a complex web of foreign influences and local customs that have never been fully explored in previous exhibitions. These multiple influences were woven together in a fusion that is uniquely Sri Lankan. The art shown in The Jeweled Isle reflects this development and also offers a window onto Sri Lanka’s rich history and culture.”
The image of a bejeweled isle, invoked in ancient Sanskrit texts and in Greco-Roman accounts of Sri Lanka’s precious gems, inspired numerous literary descriptions of the island’s wealth and lush tropical beauty. The notion of “jewels” is apparent throughout the exhibition, which includes precious decorative objects fashioned from gold, silver, and ivory, and 19th-century photographs documenting Sri Lanka’s extraordinary monuments, people, landscapes, and flora.
Many of the photographs convey the importance of sacred sites and relics in Sri Lankan Buddhist practice, which are explored through the exhibition’s presentation of art associated with three of Sri Lanka’s historical capitals—Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, and Kandy. While many religious sculptures, paintings, and architectural fragments from these sites variously express the so-called “jewels” of Buddhism, Hinduism was also an important part of the island’s cultural and religious fabric. The exhibition includes rare images of Hindu gods and Indian deities that attest to the long and constant interaction, in particular, between Sri Lanka and South India. Exquisite ivories, textiles, and furnishings further reflect nearly four centuries of European colonial presence in Sri Lanka and the dynamic interaction between local and foreign visual forms and traditions.
Sri Lanka had been known to the ancient world since the 4th century BCE when Greek mariners first caught wind of a fabulous jeweled-bearing island somewhere beyond India. Evoking this sense of ancient wonder, the opening gallery of the exhibition features a display of 21 precious gemstones that were mined in Sri Lanka. This section also introduces the diversity of Sri Lanka’s religious and artistic traditions. In addition to Buddhist artworks, it includes an important set of shrine panels that addresses the Buddhist incorporation of Indian gods, some clearly Hindu, into a protective pantheon. Impressive masks and painted earthenware vessels used in festivals and healing rituals further attest to the range of practices associated with popular and folk religious observances.
Following the introductory gallery, The Jeweled Isle is loosely organized around three chronological sections that examine the major capitals of Sri Lankan history: Anuradhapura (3rd century BCE–10th century CE), Polonnaruwa (11th–13th century), and Kandy (15th–19th century). Together, these sections address themes such as the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka, Buddhism’s accommodation of indigenous deities and beliefs, the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism, and the connection of Sri Lankan kingship to the possession of Shakyamuni Buddha’s tooth relic, which remains the most venerated object in Sri Lanka. Various subsections of the exhibition address multiple, often interrelated, facets of Sri Lankan art including the relationship between Indian and Sri Lankan culture and visual forms; Portuguese and Dutch mercantile expansion on the island; the establishment of British colonial power; the development of Sri Lankan decorative traditions; the richness of Sri Lankan courtly arts; and the legacy of Sri Lanka in the modern day. As Buddhism is the dominant religion in Sri Lanka, and was an important focus for artistic expression throughout the island’s history, Buddhist visual traditions can be seen in nearly all the sections of the show. The section on Kandy, the last independent kingdom in Sri Lanka and the present home of the tooth relic, includes a special focus on the arts associated with the Perahara, the annual procession of this revered relic.
An important anchor throughout the exhibition is provided by late 19th-century British colonial photographs which provide a context for many of the objects on view. Archaeological and architectural photographs, in particular, constitute an important record of Sri Lanka under British rule. They convey the significance of place in Sri Lankan Buddhism and allude to colonial narratives regarding the island’s history. The photographs include works by Joseph Lawton (active Sri Lanka, c. 1860–72) 1860–1872), Charles T. Scowen and Co. (active in Sri Lanka c. 1875–94), W.L.H. Skeen and Co. (active in Sri Lanka c. 1860–1920), and others. British photographic studios in Sri Lanka addressed a range of subjects, including the natural wealth of the island. Charles T. Scowen produced a number of extraordinary botanical studies in the former royal gardens at Kandy, several of which have been brought together for this exhibition.
The final gallery of The Jeweled Isle includes a contemporary artwork by California-based artist Lewis deSoto (b. 1954). DeSoto’s large inflatable sculpture is inspired by the massive 12th-century stone carving of the reclining Buddha at the Gal Vihara (Rock Monastery) in Polonnaruwa. The artist’s work serves as a commentary on the power of the Buddha’s teaching and the visual impact of the Sri Lankan Buddha image. Also included in this gallery are photographs by Reg van Cuylenburg (1926– 1988) a Sri Lankan photographer who undertook several tours across Sri Lanka between 1949 and 1958, documenting the various places he visited, the festivals he witnessed, and the people he encountered. As a counterpoint to the colonial photographic archive, van Cuylenburg’s photographs, taken in the optimistic years following Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948, represent a Sri Lankan’s own view of a much beloved homeland.
