Sri Lankan artist Kingsley Gunatilake brings five decades of practice to the capital, confronting library burnings and civil war through scorched books and abstract paintings.
Blueprint12 opens Endless Stairs, a solo exhibition by Sri Lankan artist Kingsley Gunatilake, at Bikaner House, CCA Ground Floor, New Delhi, from 4 to 8 April 2026. The show draws together book art, sculptural installations, and abstract paintings — a charged convergence of five decades of practice, political memory, and material experimentation.
For Gunatilake, the book is not merely a subject. It is a site. Since the 1990s, he has treated books as visual objects — surfaces to be burned, incised, layered, and re-examined. In Endless Stairs, that practice finds its most politically direct expression yet.
Knowledge Under Siege
The exhibition’s conceptual spine is the destruction of libraries across Sri Lanka’s recent history, particularly during the country’s decades-long civil conflict. Each book in the series is sourced second-hand, then deliberately burned. Welded steel military figures are branded onto the pages — guns raised, bodies poised to attack and their presence a direct citation of state violence and the targeted burning of libraries as an instrument of cultural erasure.
The installation’s spatial arrangement is equally deliberate. Tightly grouped books fill a single space, evoking both a library and a military encampment. The distinction between a site of knowledge and a site of power collapses entirely and that collapse is the point.
“There is a quiet intensity in Kingsley’s work that unfolds over time,” said Mandira Lamba, Director, Blueprint12. “Whether in the fragile tactility of his book works or the energy of his abstract canvases, you sense an ongoing negotiation with memory, loss, and resilience. This exhibition feels like an accumulation of lived experience — intimate yet expansive.”
The Act of Erasure as Method
Gunatilake’s practice is defined, across every medium, by acts of incision, layering, and removal. These are not purely formal decisions. They are, as Riddhi Bhalla, co-Director of Blueprint12, observes, “methods of thinking through history — where abstraction is not an escape, but a means of holding complexity.”
That continuity across five decades is itself significant. Gunatilake trained as a painter in Colombo during the 1970s and has since held over 24 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 48 group shows. His language has evolved; however, its core preoccupations — memory, conflict, impermanence — have remained consistent.
Painting on Washi: Light Through Darkness
Alongside the book art, Endless Stairs includes a new series of abstract paintings made on Japanese washi paper. Traditional washi, woven from long textile fibres, absorbs pigment differently from standard canvas or paper. This quality allows Gunatilake to move at large scale — combining deliberate mark-making with spontaneous, expansive gesture.
The layering in these works is intricate. Patterns and motifs appear and disappear through thick applications of paint. Brighter hues — yellows, mauves, blues — press upward from beneath dark, bruise-like tones. The visual logic mirrors the book works precisely: colour surviving suppression, light persisting beneath violence.
“Memory fails,” the artist suggests through this visual grammar. “It can be an illusion.” The burn marks on the books and the buried hues of the canvases speak the same language. Darkness and sterility envelop each work; simultaneously, unexpected colour seduces the viewer into looking longer.
A Practice That Spans Mediums
Gunatilake’s range as an artist extends well beyond painting and book art. His practice also encompasses installation, illustration, mixed media, sculpture, and video art. A pioneer of installation art in Sri Lanka, his acclaimed Year Planner installation remains a reference point in the country’s contemporary art history.
In 2000, he founded the Child Art Studio, organising workshops, exhibitions, and educational programmes for children, students, and teachers. Through that initiative and through his own work, Gunatilake has consistently addressed war, peace, and human rights — the personal and the political inseparable in everything he makes.
An Artist With an International Footprint
Recognition for Gunatilake’s work has come from multiple directions. He has received two NOMA Awards from Japan and an illustration award from the Biennale Illustration Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2001, the Bunka Award acknowledged his exceptional contribution to Sri Lanka’s Temple of the Tooth — a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Recent exhibitions include a Focus Asia solo booth at Frieze Seoul (2024) with Blueprint12, a presentation at Himi Gallery, Tokyo (2023), and continuous participation at the India Art Fair from 2020 to 2025. His work is held in significant collections worldwide.
Why Endless Stairs Matters Now
India and Sri Lanka share a fraught, deeply intertwined history. The burning of the Jaffna Public Library in 1981 — one of the most significant acts of cultural destruction in modern South Asian history — remains an open wound in Tamil and Sri Lankan collective memory. Gunatilake’s decision to confront this history directly, through his own body and his own materials, is itself a significant artistic and political act.
Endless Stairs arrives in New Delhi as a reminder that the destruction of knowledge is never a merely historical event. In a region that has witnessed repeated assaults on archives, monuments, and cultural institutions, the exhibition’s urgency extends well beyond its Sri Lankan frame. These scorched books are evidence. The steel soldiers are still standing.
Event Details
Endless Stairs — Kingsley Gunatilake
4 – 8 April 2026 | 11 am – 7 pm
Bikaner House, CCA Ground Floor, New Delhi
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
