Dinithi Samarawickrama

Love of a Swan in the Garden

1

May 2024

1

May

2024

24

May 2024

Gallery 1

Love of a Swan in the Garden

Dinithi Samarawickrama

1

May 2024

1

May

2024

24

May 2024

Gallery 1

Love of A Swan in The Garden is a love letter written to all of the people that Dinithi has ever loved and been loved by. Guided by the Swan, who is both Compass and Maze and the Lady, who is both the artist and the skies under which they were born, this work depicts the time travel journey that unravels in the meeting of these two souls. Anchored by the evolution of the water lily, and its deep time angiosperm wisdom, the mythic past meets the mystic present and spreads into a Web of folk-loric circular time, depicting an eternal love and the worlds that unravel in the midst of it.

Exhibition documented by Evan Lim.

Love of A Swan in The Garden is a love letter written to all of the people that Dinithi has ever loved and been loved by. Guided by the Swan, who is both Compass and Maze and the Lady, who is both the artist and the skies under which they were born, this work depicts the time travel journey that unravels in the meeting of these two souls. Anchored by the evolution of the water lily, and its deep time angiosperm wisdom, the mythic past meets the mystic present and spreads into a Web of folk-loric circular time, depicting an eternal love and the worlds that unravel in the midst of it.

Dinithi Samarawickrama

Dinithi is a Queer, Sri Lankan born artist and maker, living and working on Wurundjeri Land of the Kulin Nation. Dinithi spent the first six years of their childhood growing up among the coconut trees, rice paddies and waterfalls of their homeland. The natural beauty of their country starkly contrasted with the climate of state sanctioned violence and rigid patriarchal and heteronormative values that held their motherland in a python's embrace.  Despite emigrating to so-called Australia at the age of six, Dinithi’s heart remains haunted by the red earth of their homeland and its ghosts. Their artistic practice is an act of dreaming; of looking within the wreckage left by imperialism, climate collapse and colonial devastation to find the remnants of strength and hope that glimmer in its midst, and carry them through to the future. Drawing from folktales, archaeological site analysis, and the visions of animal spirits that they have encountered throughout their life, Dinithi creates a mythic world that embraces the grief of diasporic yearning; knowing that on the other side of grief, love awaits.