Pavitra Wickramasinghe

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Part of my practice is a response to the traditional ‘white cube' gallery model and its viewers' languid response to the work. It is also a response to the shadows and exclusions created by institutional forms of display and mechanisms of representation. My artistic process is less about finding or inventing new objects, rather I am concerned with finding again, what went missing because of conditioned mechanisms of perception and viewing practices.

My practice is influenced by archaic illusionary methods in film, theatre and sideshows, many of which were done to simulate ghosts or metamorphosis.  I am interested in perception as a construction or interpretation rather than a direct grasp of the world. I am interested in the ghosts and shadows created by official mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. The kind of void created by what is not mentioned or represented- by deliberate exclusions. Currently, I am exploring the notion of ghost as an absence caught in a paradoxical presence. It is manifesting in multidisciplinary processes- ink drawings, photographs, digital prints, light installations, stop-motion animations, Super8 films and videos.

BIOGRAPHY:

Pavitra Wickramasinghe's practice is inherently multi-disciplinary and mainly concerned with new ways of conceptualizing the moving image. Pavitra has exhibited at the MadCat Film Festival, San Francisco; Images Festival, Toronto; and Made In Video Festival , Copenhagen. She is a grant recipient from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Pavitra was the Assistant Director at the artist run centre- Stride Gallery for three years before starting her MFA at Concordia University.

Pavitra Wickramasinghe