Ancient Cultures, New Futures: A Photographic Exhibition for Sri Lankan Reconciliation
Ancient Cultures, New Futures is a traveling photographic exhibition that seeks to contribute to the much-needed process of healing by supporting dialogue and reconciliation across the boundaries of continuing difference. Rather than focusing on the familiar images of war, destruction and personal suffering, or on post-war reconstruction and the growing level of material wealth in Sri Lanka, it seeks out ambivalent images that encapsulate both the challenges facing the country and the hopes carried by all for a different kind of future.
The exhibition is an initiative of Global Reconciliation and Initiatives of Change, in partnership with key figures of the Australian Sri Lankan community. It brings together works donated by photographers Stephen Champion, Paul James, Dominic Sansoni and Sivathas Sivasubramanium, and seeks to press further the challenge of reconciliation, within the Sri Lankan communities both in Australia and in Sri Lanka itself.
The photographs carry the weight of the past — negative and positive — but also speak of warm encounters, creative confrontations, and powerful new possibilities. The exhibition is organized around the all-pervading presence of the physical and cultural beauty of Sri Lanka, of the trauma to which all — old and young — have been exposed, and on the struggle to emerge triumphantly from the past of sadness and pain. Four themes form its structure: the all-pervasive, rich and diverse, ancient culture; the unfinished, sad and poignant legacy of the conflict; the determined re-establishment of everyday life; and the struggle for a world of renewed hope and shared achievement.
Ancient Cultures, New Futures was launched in August 2014, with further exhibitions scheduled in the following years in North Melbourne and Dandenong, viewed by some 2,000 people. Each exhibition held community workshops to discuss reconciliation and ways forward for Sri Lankans, filmed and published on Youtube. A book of the exhibition, its implications and outcomes, is being published.
