COLOMBOSCOPE

Colomboscope is a contemporary arts festival and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue that has grown steadily within the cultural landscape of Colombo since 2013. The festival has worked with a range of intergenerational artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, social theorists and scientific researchers from Sri Lanka and internationally delivering a focused programme with each festival edition held at key historic sites in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Several of the cultural practitioners participating in Colomboscope have gone on to show their work within regional and international exhibitions. The festival organizers are 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.

Fold Media Collective Initiatives, the organizing entity for Colomboscope is a registered non-profit organisation that consists of freelance cultural professionals, they have a background in design, arts management, architecture, cultural production, communications and have worked with a range of local institutions.

Forest as Lexicon serves as the biennial publication bringing together text and visual resources connected with the eighth edition of Colomboscope as a growing initiative fostering local and transregional cultural production and interdisciplinary dialogue. This publication will be conceived with guest curators, artists and organisers Protick Sarker (Dhaka, Bangladesh), Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari (Kathmandu, Nepal). The publication will provide in-depth descriptions of the art works on view at Colomboscope 2024 and highlight the participating artists’ approaches and working interests, while supporting experimental publishing formats via the platform’s website.

Forest as a Lexicon encourages the work of cultural scholars researching independent arts infrastructure in Sri Lanka and the South Asian region, and will feature writing on Sri Lankan and South Asian contemporary artists as well as critical pieces looking into historic and literary themes. Previous Colomboscope festival publications have been circulated around the region and internationally and given especially Sri Lankan artists visibility and increased mobility and exhibition opportunities that has otherwise been rare.

Website: colomboscope
Social Media: Instagram