CHRISTOPHER KULENDRAN THOMAS
b. 1979, United KingdomChristopher Kulendran Thomas’ (b. 1979; lives and works in Berlin) paintings algorithmically metabolise Sri Lanka’s colonial art history. Growing up in London after his family left escalating ethnic oppression in Sri Lanka—and influenced from afar by his Sri Lankan contemporaries— Kulendran Thomas is interested in how particular conceptions of human expression are transmitted from the centres of global art power and interpreted at the peripheries of where those narratives are defined. By generating new compositions in the form of PNGs through a neural network trained to reproduce patterns of influence of the Western canon on Sri Lanka’s contemporary art scene, the resulting images are painted by Kulendran Thomas’ studio by hand, bringing another layer of interpretation on an already simulated reality. As a result, these works question human creativity that is reproduced memetically, as it offers a lens into the ambiguous confines of the algorithmic and the human, the individual and the collective as well as authenticity and imitation, while simultaneously questioning how history is written and by whom.
Kulendran Thomas is an artist of Tamil descent, who spent his formative years in London, after his family left Sri Lanka during the escalating ethnic oppression there. Through immersive film installation, painting and sculpture, Kulendran Thomas’ practice explores lost histories, alternative possibilities and Sri Lanka’s colonial art history. He uses advanced technologies across multiple disciplines and often through fluid collaborations with architects, writers, technologists, designers, musicians and activists from around the world.
His work is part of important public and private collections including that of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and will be the subject of a solo show at WIELS in Brussels in 2024. Recent solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at Kunsthalle Zürich (2023); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2022); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2019); Institute for Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); Spike Island, Bristol (2019); and Tensta konsthall, Stockholm (2017). Kulendran Thomas’ work has been included in the 5th Timisoara Biennial (2023); the 2nd Front Triennial, Cleveland (2022); and the 7th Bi-City Biennale, Shenzhen (2017); as well as the 11th Gwangju Biennale; the 9th Berlin Biennale; and the 3rd Dhaka Art Summit (all 2016).
Courtesy Experimenter, Kolkata/Mumbai.
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