“Running Rivers” explores themes of belonging, regeneration, and migrant identity through our connection with waterways. The project is divided into two parts. The first part, “Pigments of Place,” showcased in a solo exhibition in Australia, she delved into her personal journey as a migrant woman of color, searching for a sense of belonging while encountering racism and bullying. Through the healing power of waterways, she embarked on an exploration of place through movement, taste, smell, pigments, vibration, and texture. This process led to a profound rediscovery of her identity within a decolonized body.

“Pilgrims of Place” represents the next chapter in her diasporic journey as she return to her birth country, reclaiming the knowledge of its lands within a decolonized body. The exhibition explores the notion of belonging in a country she has been separated from for an extended period, emphasizing recalibration, renewal, and regeneration. Her work comes fourth from dreaming, praying and belonging. This body of work adds another layer to her work by learning and understanding on how to work with deities of the land through ritual and ceremonies and incorporating Ritual drawings.

Anup Vega is a contemporary drawing artist based in Nalanda Sri Lanka. Anup has been working as a pilgrim of the landscape and used movement as a way of allowing the work to flow.
For the last five years, living by the lake Nalanda has had an immense effect to Anup Vega’s Pilgrimage of place through stillness.

“Pilgrim Blues” – Anup recalls as an attempt on escaping the mind, and surrendering to the habitual thought process by only witnessing as a function. While eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Anup has been a mentor to kuweni over a couple of years, initiated by the Queensland state government in Australia. They both have mutual interest in the outer rivers in the landscape and the inner river, the consciousness are a strong influence in their work.

The exhibition’s aim is to inspire individuals to truly feel at home within their bodies and in the places they have migrated to and the country they have migrated from. It encourages diasporic communities to reconcile cultural boundaries, embrace hybridity, and foster transcultural flow.

Curated by Vidhi Todi Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka 27 July – 27 August 2023