Way of the Forest is a traveling edition of the arts festival Colomboscope that converges artistic pathways to rekindle knowledge of interdependence, custodianship, and restorative practices across rainforests, wilderness, mountain cultivations, and riverine wetlands. Taking over Galleries 1 and 2 inside 421 Arts Campus in Abu Dhabi, it invites deschooling – moving from the curriculum of plunder, reckless supremacy and extinction, to embrace active listening beyond the human sensorium. The forest as a lexicon holds a plenitude of meaning across languages: Aaranya in Tamil (ஆரண்யா) and Sanskrit relating to a sanctuary, vana (වන) in Sinhala. Bonn, Jongol, and Aranno in Bangla, guṁ in Nepal Bhasa, tēṁ in Tamu—each evoking distinct states of being, emotions, disparate imagination, and a palpable climate. 

This exhibition is an intricate study of our eroding ecological histories, of lost environmental wisdoms, monstrous developmental agendas, and ghosts of extraction. It endeavors to plot legacies of colonization of resources and minds that operate in disguise. Within mutating landscapes, artists question who owns forest lands, who gets displaced, and who is restricted from sites marked for conservation. 

What do the spirits of these lands, rivers, forests whisper in our ears? In many folktales, legends, and mythologies, forests are associated with apparitions, witches, and other mystical beings. These entities are often depicted as powerful and independent, existing beyond the reach of societal constraints. They are also spaces that elicit fear, of things unknown, and forces beyond human control. With the rise of imperialism the exploitation of natural resources and abuse of primary inhabitants was exacerbated as a fulfillment of greed, power, and ego. The subjugation of jungles and wildernesses then portrayed as a victory over the vastness, unruliness, mysticism of forests. 

Many Indigenous peoples find themselves navigating nation-states driven by corporate capitalism and geopolitical hegemony. Throughout this struggle, there have been profound transitions marked by loss, change, resistance, and at times, even hopelessness. Revolutionaries, outcasts, borderline beings find solace and refuge within the forest’s sheltering embrace. Its dense foliage and shaded paths provide a sense of secrecy and protection, allowing those seeking autonomy and freedom to gather and organize away from prying eyes, to recalibrate uncertainty and fear, to dream of alternative power structures, of new world orders. 

Participating artists are Moza Almatrooshi, Rakibul Anwar, U. Arulraj, Nahla al Tabbaa, Shiraz Bayjoo, Jayatu Chakma, Pathum Dharmarathna, Saodat Ismailova, Tamarra Jayasundera,Karachi LaJamia, Sanod Maharjan, Sangita Maity, Otobong Nkanga, Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah, MTF Rukshana, Sarmila Sooriyakumar with Pirainila Krishnarajah, Thava Thajendran,Kulagu Tu Buvongan, and Karunasiri Wijesinghe.

This exhibition is curated by Hit Man Gurung (artist and curator), Natasha Ginwala (Artistic Director,Colomboscope), Sheelasha Rajbhandari (artist and curator), Sarker Protick (artist and curator) with Vidhi Todi (assistant curator,Colomboscope 2024). 

Way of the Forest is the 8th edition of the COLOMBOSCOPE festival held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from January 19 to 28, 2024. This iteration of the festival at 421 Arts Campus has been adapted to reach audiences in the UAE, and marks the second time partnering with Colomboscope. 

For school visits, please note that tours can be arranged on request. Kindly email hello@421.online for further assistance.

To download and view the exhibition press kit, please visit this link. 

About Colomboscope

Colomboscope is a contemporary arts festival and a multi-format learning and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue that has grown steadily within the cultural landscape of Colombo since 2013. The festival is committed to building a sustainable and context-responsive environment for cultural producers to continue generating path-breaking, collaborative, and genre-defying approaches in the field.

Curators’ Biographies 

Hit Man Gurung is an artist and curator based in Kathmandu by way of Lamjung. Gurung’s diverse practice concerns itself with the fabric of human mobilities, frictions of history, and failures of revolutions. While rooted in the recent history of Nepal, his works unravel a complex web of kinships and extraction across geographies that underscore the exploitative nature of capitalism. These narratives revolve around the lived experiences of migrants caught between a dehumanizing transnational labor-based industry and an apathetic nation-state. He furthermore invokes Indigenous methodologies and epistemologies to fundamentally reconfigure contemporary artistic praxis. He has participated in exhibitions at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2020); Biennale of Sydney (2020); Artspace Sydney (2019); Weltmuseum Wien (2019); Kathmandu Triennale (2017); Yinchuan Biennale (2016); Para Site, Hong Kong (2016); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2015-16); and Dhaka Art Summit (2014, 2016, 2018 ,2020). He was co-curator for the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (2022), Nepal Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2022), ‘Garden of Ten Seasons’ at Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2022) and ’12 Baishakh,’ Bhaktapur (2015) alongside Sheelasha Rajbhandari. He has also co-founded ArtTree Nepal an artist collective and Kalā Kulo an arts initiative. 

Sheelasha Rajbhandari is an artist and curator based out of Kathmandu. Her works draw upon an embodied and speculative lineage of femininities to question the positioning of women across time, landscapes, and cosmologies. Her practice is a provocation to reflect beyond neo-liberal conception of time in order to decenter patriarchal structures that perpetuate cycles of industrial extraction and individual exhaustion. For her, art-making is about making space for collective action. This questioning feeds into her recent artistic and curatorial approach that recompose notions of Indigeneity, gender, worth, and productivity. Her installation in the traveling exhibition “A beast, a god and a line” (2018-2020) was presented at Para Site, Hong Kong; TS1, Yangon; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Kunsthall, Trondheim; and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai. She has also been an artist in residence at the Bellas Artes Projects (2019) and Para Site (2017). She has furthermore exhibited at Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2022), Weltmuseum Wien (2019); Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2017); and Kathmandu Triennale (2017). As a part of her collective, she has been a part of Dhaka Art Summit (2020) and Biennale of Sydney (2020). Rajbhandari co-curated the Kathmandu Triennale 2077, Nepal Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2022), ‘Garden of Ten Seasons’ at Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2022) and ’12 Baishakh,’ Bhaktapur (2015) alongside Hit Man Gurung. She is also the co-founder of ArtTree Nepal an artist collective and Kalā Kulo an arts initiative.  

Sarker Protick’s photography frequently builds the narrative around the trope of change; momentary stillness,fleeting light, elemental origins of a place and a lost home. To make the decaying memory tangible, to define disappearing history of a place without confining it, Protick’s often minimal, suspended and atmospheric visuals are coherently open with vast and solemn distance.Working with Photography, Video and Sound, Protick's works are built on long-term surveys rooted in Bangladesh.The form and materiality of his works often morph into the physicality of time; it's raptures and our inability to grasp or hold time, the process of image-making as the way to expand time, to make space for more subdued moments, or more hints of an embodied life. Herewe don’t experience time as moving in a linear direction, rather, we experience it slowing down, recurring, having dips and curves, sometimes changing in a constant flux. Protick studied at the South Asian Media Institute–Pathshala in Dhaka, where he is currently teaching for the last ten years. Protick is a co-curator of Chobi Mela, the longest running International Photography Festival in Asia. His work has received several recognition and fellowships, including Joop Swart Masterclass, Foam Talent, Light WorkResidency, Magnum Foundation Fund, World Press Photo Award etc. Protick is represented by Shrine Empire in Delhi.

Artistic Director 

Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher and writer, co-curator, Sharjah Biennial 16 (2023-25), artistic director of Colomboscope, Sri Lanka since 2019 and associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018 – 2024). She was also artistic director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale with Defne Ayas (2021). Ginwala has been part of curatorial teams of 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014), Contour Biennale 8, documenta 14 (2017), Taipei Biennale 2012 and co-curated several international exhibitions including at e-flux, Sharjah Art Foundation, Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, ifa Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, L’ appartement 22, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, MCA Chicago, 56th Venice Biennale, SAVVY Contemporary and Zeitz MOCAA. Ginwala is a widely published author with a focus on contemporary art, visual culture, and social justice. 

Assistant Curator

Vidhi Todi is the Assistant Curator of Colomboscope 2024. Previously, she worked with Experimenter (2019–2023), a leading contemporary gallery with spaces in Kolkata/ Mumbai, liaising with artists on exhibitions and programs, participated in planning and executing art fairs, and managed the Generator Cooperative Art Production Fund. She also collaborates independently with artists on exhibitions, production and project management.

She has a keen interest in book making and has worked on publications with artists, writers, galleries and publishing houses. She recently curated an exhibition on zines at the Experimenter Residency, Kolkata (2022). She also teaches workshops on bookmaking tools and softwares.

She received her Bachelors in Fine Arts and Art History; and completed a publication course with The Seagull School of Publishing. She is based between Colombo and Kolkata.