Dumith Kulasekara is an artist and educator born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Kulasekara received his initial art education from the University of Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo, and completed an MFA in Painting at the prestigious New York Academy of Art in the US. While studying at the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Kulasekara created a unique aesthetic for himself. He has had two solo exhibitions, both focusing on the subject of trauma, and has also exhibited his work in various group exhibitions in countries including the US, UK and France. He is currently the Head of the Department of Painting at the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Sri Lanka.

Kulasekara belongs to a new second generation of artists following the 90s Trend in the contemporary art scene of Sri Lanka. Having lived through, and witnessed the country’s 30-year ethnic conflict, he largely focuses on its aftermath, and the effect the end of the conflict had on the citizens of Sri Lanka. Trauma as a lived experience, as well as a conceptual lineage in the history of art, locates Kulasekara’s work. His approach adopts the sensations and narratives of trauma as a consequence of conflict. His first solo exhibition titled Exhibition of Trauma (2008) included pieces directly influenced by his personal experience as a child growing up amidst conflict. The trauma of being affected by the socio-political and cultural repercussions of the conflict without fully understanding its circumstances as a child is present in this body of work.

The Symbolical Impossibility of Disavowing Trauma, his second solo exhibition, visually explored the concept of trauma even further. The paintings one sees are of the artist himself, revisited several times alongside his mother and wife. They evoke obvious echoes of the Freudian, and acknowledge the traumatic in relation to experiences associated with gender identity and sexual orientation(s). Kulasekara’s style is also emblematic for its inclusion of floral and phallic imagery, often on a single canvas. Sensuality and sexuality are portrayed as “surreal mindscapes of heightened colour, incongruous figures, and sensual colour and form, which sit awkwardly against tortured and distended bodies” – Josephine Breese writes.