Sri Lankan artist Pala Pothupitye talks to Payal Uttam about scooping the 2010 Sovereign Asian Art Prize – and the controversy that surrounds his works.

In a lime green rental studio outside Colombo, Sri Lankan artist Pala Pothupitye is staring at a computer screen with a wide grin on his face. The Sovereign Art Foundation has just named him the winner of their Asian Art Prize – a major platform for emerging talent in the region. “I am really happy that I got first award,” he shyly announces in broken English.

Behind him hangs a colourful drawing from the same series as his prize-winning work, Jaffna Map. Time Out is on the other end of a video chat peering into his studio from the Foundation’s office in Hollywood Road. Sounds of tropical birds chattering in the background crackle through the computer speakers.

Pothupitye was meant to be in Hong Kong today to collect his prize but he was denied a visa at the last minute. “Earlier there was an on-arrival visa for Sri Lankans but now this has changed,” says the 39 year-old artist, shaking his head. “This is the reality of my map work – people are making boundaries, saying these people are good, these people are bad, these are terrorists and those are not.”

The work Jaffna Map itself nearly didn’t make it out of Sri Lanka. A manager in the FedEx office falsely accused it of being a Tamil Tiger plot against the government and intercepted the shipment. The map was only released after Pothupitye received permission from the Ministry of Defence two weeks later.

“They said this is not an artwork, but a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTT) map with LTT logos and photographs of Velupillai Prabhakaran [the founder of LTT] enclosed, but it was all lies,” says Annoushka Hempel, Pothupitye’s nominator who flew in to accept the award on his behalf.

The map shows the highly contested city of Jaffna on the northern tip of Sri Lanka but bears no trace of LTT insignia. Pothupitye used a ballpoint pen and pencils to draw teeth and claws of lions and tigers onto the landmasses. In the border areas, he sketched displaced bodies huddled together. The reference to the brutal war between the Tamil Tigers’ and lions or the Sinhalese people is clear.

“This is about the geopolitics of my land. We’ve had a war for more than 30 years in this country,” Pothupitye explains. “I did this map series after the war while in deep depression. I’m trying to say something about where I was born, where I am coming from and where I belong.”

Pothupitye says he has been working on some new geopolitical works and leaps out of his chair to fetch one. He unfurls a map showing a fire dragon ready to pounce on Sri Lanka from the south. “This is the new colonialism which I am exploring. We have already become almost like colonies under China and India,” he says.

Pothupitye’s winning map was singled out from the pool of more than 400 entries. The panel of judges included key players in
the Asian art world like Fumio Nanjo, Director of the Mori Museum, Tokyo; artist Xu Bing; and curator David Elliott. They had
a particularly tough time deciding on a winner this year, as the 30 finalists were arguably the strongest group since the award’s inception.

Now that Pothupitye has won the prize of US$25,000, he hopes to raise awareness of Sri Lankan art. He is currently mentoring five young artists from a collective outside the capital city and plans to share the money with them. But before that, his first order of business will be to move out of his modest rental studio and build a place of his own.

For details on the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, visit www.sovereignartfoundation.com.