Johan Wijesinghe
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LACMA - The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka
As project architect and designer, I was responsible for the design and delivery of the exhibition environment throughout.
The exhibition was the first comprehensive survey of Sri Lankan art organised by a US museum. 250 works. Nearly two millennia of history. Drawn from LACMA's collection and international loans.
The design was developed with curators Dr. Robert L. Brown and Dr. Tushara Bindu Gude of LACMA's South and Southeast Asian Art Department. The starting point was the objects themselves — the settings in which they were found, the spatial logic of the places they came from. The exhibition space was not a neutral container. It was built from the architectural elements of ancient Sri Lanka, abstracted and redeployed.
Three elements recur. The column — whole, buried, fragmented. The plinth, as a marking device for venerated objects and places. The mandala, as a system for orienting oneself in relation to the cosmos. Granite grey monolithic forms suggest ruins extruded from the ground plane. Movement follows axial and diagonal relationships drawn from ancient sacred compounds.
A selection of significant sacred objects is set against panels in shades of saffron — a pigment derived from turmeric, used in ritual, in the marking of sacred objects, and in the robes of clerics across South Asia. The 17th–18th century wooden shutter panels from a Buddhist temple anchor a contemplative room at the heart of the exhibition.
saffron-hued panels helped us highlight the significance of specific artifacts.