Climate Positive Exhibition Inspires Hope and Action
The Climate Positive exhibition at the Barefoot Gallery invites viewers on ten intricate journeys crafted by the Creative Catalyst Fellowship. The exhibition explores the artists’ role as catalysts, collaborators and stewards of transformation in the face of climate change, offering a powerful narrative of regeneration and possibility. Their collective vision emerges from a unique fellowship experience, founded on the belief in art’s power to inspire change.
Randhula De Silva, Programme Director of the Creative Catalyst Fellowship, shares insights into the vision behind this initiative. “The inspiration behind all this was to create an intervention in bringing creative practitioners of Sri Lanka together with other parts of our community that was actively engaged in the topic of climate action and also conservation,” De Silva explains. She highlights the crucial need for different sectors – science, innovation, industry and the arts to converge, exchange knowledge and collectively envision a more promising future for both humanity and the environment.
For De Silva, the choice to work with the creative community was deliberate. “We truly believe that there is a lot of more space for informed, creative voices to step up and shape the societal narrative in Sri Lanka,” she asserts. Without a shift in societal narratives, she believes, efforts by industry, policymakers and government to instigate change will remain challenging. Creativity, she argues, is the ultimate tool to embed new ideas into the very fabric of society.
In the context of climate change, a pivotal narrative the Creative Catalyst Fellowship seeks to transform is the prevailing man versus nature mindset. De Silva points out that this narrative is relatively new to Sri Lanka. “Our deep knowledge and connection to nature has been forgotten very fast in the name of development and progress,” she laments. The fellowship aims to revisit and reclaim the ancient wisdom of man with nature, advocating for development and prosperity that harmonises with the environment. This aligns with the exhibition’s core theme of regeneration, a commitment to fostering cycles of renewal between humanity and the natural world.
The Creative Catalyst Fellowship, a one year programme, commenced in June 2024 with a transformative two week immersive residency. The initial phase was crucial, providing a space for all fellows to connect with each other and engage deeply with concepts of science and conservation. Scientists, conservationists, architects and solution builders injected the artists with deep inspiration, connections, networks and philosophies. For many, this residency planted a seed of inspiration that would blossom into their final artworks.
Following the residency, the fellows embarked on seven months of intensive mentorship. They crafted their artistic ideas, refining them with guidance from a diverse array of experts, including ethnographers, ethnobotanists, scientists and narrative writers. The selection process for the fellowship was highly rigorous, initiated through an open call application in early 2024 that garnered over 120 submissions from across Sri Lanka. The ten selected fellows underwent a comprehensive scoring and interview process, evaluated not only on their existing body of work but also their demonstrated interest in climate related topics, their geographical origins and their connection to communities. They came from various parts of the country including Colombo, Kandy, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa and Jaffna. De Silva highlights the “beautiful synergy and symbiosis” that emerged during the residency as their varied cultures, opinions and worldviews intertwined, shaping each other’s artistic and creative inspirations.
The exhibition showcases an impressive breadth of mediums and narratives, each a powerful reflection of the fellows’ journeys. Dilsiri Welikala from Kalpitya presents the Plastic Monster, a series of three striking sculptures crafted from ocean plastics found on the beaches of Donkey Point. Accompanied by an immersive film screened at the exhibition, his work serves as poignant scientific advocacy, calling out multinationals, governments and consumers to re-evaluate their relationship with plastic waste.
Lakshika Rajapakse introduces Our Friends the Fish, an interactive project inspired by a conservation story she encountered. The piece recounts the successful repopulation of the Bandula barb, an indigenous fish species, through community efforts designed to motivate both children and adults to participate in preserving aquatic ecosystems. From Jaffna, Krishnapriya Tharmakrishnaroffers microscopic drawings of human body cells that respond to elements of nature. Her intricate work underscores the profound interconnectedness of humanity and nature, visually demonstrating how healing nature can, in turn, heal ourselves and that there is no escaping the devastation that we are creating.
Dinoj Mahendranathan contributes a fascinating series of works including a collection of bird sounds recorded during the residency and in forests such as Sinharaja. From these recordings he has created three unique records, composing songs that explore the concept of nature and climate through the sounds of the natural world. Kaushalya Nandasena from a border village in Polonnaruwa presents a reflective photographic series. Her work explores the human-elephant coexistence and conflict in her community, which sits within an elephant habitat, capturing both the human and elephant perspectives of this complex interaction. Kanil Dias Abeyagunawardene explores the potential of upcycled plastics, demonstrating how discarded materials like bottle caps can be transformed into objects of beauty utilising a machine he constructed.
The journey to bring the exhibition to fruition was not without significant challenges. The Creative Catalyst Fellowship was directly impacted by the stop work order issued in January 2025 following the US government’s suspension of foreign aid, including all USAID-supported programmes. At that time, the exhibition was 90 percent complete, threatening to derail months of work. Fortunately, the Good Life X team, the company behind the fellowship along with the ten dedicated fellows chose to press forward. Through sheer determination and the support of local patrons and allies, they raised contributions and invested their own efforts to ensure the exhibition could proceed, albeit at a scaled down level from its original vision.
When this edition of the fellowship concludes, the hope is for the Creative Catalyst Fellowship to continue for at least five more years. Its continuation hinges on securing new funding and De Silva expresses optimism that the impact of the exhibition will inspire support for this crucial vision.
Ultimately, she hopes that visitors to the exhibition will leave feeling a renewed sense of connection – connected to themselves, to the other and to the surrounding ecology that they’re surrounded with. In a world often characterised by disconnection, Climate Positive aims to inspire a sense of unity, motivating individuals to reflect on their own impact and take even the smallest steps towards a more positive and regenerative future.
