Pavitra Wickramasinghe

*Collaboration with Amélie Brisson-Darveau

Les habitats de l'ombre, created for the Mosaique écran at Espace culture Georges-Émile-Lapalme, Place des Arts, Montréal, explored the nuanced meanings of light and darkness in a multiscreen installation. Utilizing ombromanie, or shadow puppetry, the installation featured playful interactions of shadow animals cast by diverse "hand models," including children and adults of various generations, genders, and races. The final video images combined these cast shadows with different natural environments. The installation’s multiple screens allowed for poetic readings of the visual narrative, showcasing pairs of hands engaged in shadow puppetry that conveyed stories related to entertainment and community life. Inspired by Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the project served as a metaphor for the journey to enlightenment, exploring themes of perception, reality, and knowledge, with light symbolizing knowledge and enlightenment, and darkness representing ignorance and fear. By using shadows, the installation aimed to challenge negative connotations and reveal their poetic, ambiguous, and agentive character. The project drew on Donna Haraway's concept of situated knowledge, emphasizing the importance of understanding the position and context of the knowledge producer to achieve greater objectivity. The subterranean setting of the installation, reminiscent of Plato's cave, featured multiscreen displays and reflective black tiles, creating a captivating mosaic effect that immersed viewers in a new world.

MULTICHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION, 2024

Three giant, kite-like mobiles are suspended and rotated overhead. Under the effect of directed lighting, the moving sculptures take on an unexpected dimension, composing shimmering plays of light and shadow on the surrounding surfaces.

The term umbra refers to the darkest part of a shadow cast by an opaque object. With this kinetic installation, I explore the relationship between darkness and light, and its impact on our perceptions. I aim to turn away from negative ideas of darkness, revealing its redeeming and transformative qualities instead.

MOVING IMAGE INSTALLATION, 2024
Generique Design, Production, and technical direction

Curated by Ariane Plante, Commissaire aux arts technologiques - Grand Théâtre de Québec

A co-production and co-presentation by Grand Théâtre de Québec, Avatar and Manif d'art 11 - La biennale de Québec

The public art project Le vol du printemps is inspired by the sustainability initiative of the town of Mont-Tremblant and the life cycle of the maple tree. It is a series of screens with a carved pattern of maple seeds, made from salvaged wood from Québec's logging era, using the mashrabiya technique. The artwork will play with natural light and cast shadows of the seeds on the walls and floor, creating an ethereal wallpaper that follows the trajectory of the sun. The use of salvaged wood minimizes environmental impact and supports regional development. The work embodies the values of Centre sportif de Mont-Tremblant as a place dedicated to both sports and environmental preservation.

PUBLIC ART PROJET, SALVAGED WOOD & POWDER-COATED ALUMINUM

Production and technical direction: Jonathan Villeneuve

*Collaboration with Amélie Brisson-Darveau

The exhibition is the result of Wickramasinghe and Brisson-Darveau’s PHI Montréal public engagement residency, realized between September 2022 and June 2023. Within the context of this residency, the artists co-facilitated a series of workshops on the waves of gentrification that can be observed in certain neighborhoods in proximity to the Lucien-Pagé school. In walks accompanied by the artists, students looked at the areas of Villeray, Little Italy and Mile-Ex, observing the different architectures that have been built there over the course of the last century, and noting the transformation of civic or religious buildings into residential real estate developments. They were also invited to reflect on the different lives of 6528-6574 Waverly, an industrial building which now welcomes artists’ studios, and is located in the middle of a neighborhood undergoing accelerated gentrification.

Varied traces collected by participants will be deployed in an installation that evokes the spectral presence of buildings whose future is uncertain. The exhibition comes with an activity booklet, offered free of charge, that will allow the public to revisit the project’s neighbourhoods and sites.

The artists and the curator wish to thank the PHI Montreal residency program, Dominic St-Louis from the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal, Audray-Ann St-Louis and her students, Marie-Fei Deguire, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, and Paul Lofeodo for their contributions to the project.

CERAMIC, PHOTOGRAPHY, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, MIXED MEDIA, 2023

Curated by Daniel Fiset, Adjunct Curator – Engagement, Fondation PHI pour l’art contemporain

“Never turn your back to the sea” was something my grandmother always said when we visited the beach close to her house in Dehiwala. Having lived next to the sea her whole life, she knew about every drowning that occurred in the neighborhood and was weary of us kids playing at the beach. It is difficult to live close to the sea. The sea has the power to overwhelm and own everything in its proximity. Your own small life is insignificant next to its enormous power. The sea can wash away entire houses, sink, and bury ships, wear down bricks into smooth pebbles, and carry away the sandals from your feet. This exhibition engages with the sea, a place occupied by desires, hopes, and dreams as well as grief and mourning.

DRAWING INSTALLATION: PEN ON PAPER, LASER-CUT PAPER, CYANOTYPE ON LASER-CUT PAPER, MOTORS, VIDEO PROJECTION, 2022

Curated by Erandy Vergara

DRAWING INSTALLATION, PEN ON PAPER AND LASER-CUT PAPER

PUBLIC ART PROJECT - L’ARÉNA RAYMOND-BOURQUE, SAINT-LAURENT, QC, 2022.

MOVING IMAGE INSTALLATION. 3D PRINTED PLASTIC, CAST PORCELAIN, HAND-THROWN STONEWARE, TURNTABLES, SCREEN, LIGHTS AND SHADOWS, 2018.

In exploring the Museum’s Asian collection, I was drawn to a modest object, a Sawankhalok tea caddy dated to the sixteenth century. Originally created in Thailand as a perfumed-oil jar, this object got shipped to Japan where it was recycled into the tea ceremony as a powdered-tea container. The way in which the jar adapted to a new place – identity and use reinvented – resonated with ideas on migration, translation and islands. The caddy’s wondrous journey reflects the movement of commerce, culture, tradition and religion. The installation captures the essence of translation and transformation brought on by migration through an imaginary 

landscape conjured up by projecting the shadows of a series of sculptures onto a panoramic screen. Placed on turntables, the sculptures’ shadows continuously morph and evolve, each one deconstructing the tea caddy visually as well as metaphorically, thus exploring the original in shape, material and ornamentation. Although the sculptures reference the original prototype, their forms also venture beyond it, playing with the idea of ever-evolving transformation. What is lost, gained and morphed in the translation? 

3D PRINT TECHNICIAN: TIM BELLIVEAU

COLLECTION OF MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS DE MONTRÉAL

Review: Letarte, Martine. "Des regards pluriels pour réactualiser des œuvres anciennes" Le Devoir. Montréal, Canada.

Frontière is a sight specific outdoor sculpture of a suspended upside down boat containing floating lanterns. Its placement high above a forgotten corner of the city incites the fantasy of being here and everywhere at the same time. During the day, the floating boat will invite daydreamers to linger underneath, while at night the vessel will light up to welcome passersby to wonder in a space that is usually out of bounds.

PUBLIC-ART INSTALLATION- QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES, MONTRÉAL. SAILBOAT, WOOD, NYLON, METAL, PLASTIC, PLANTS, ELECTRONICS AND LIGHTS, 2017.

PRODUCTION AND TECHNICAL DIRECTION: WIREFRAME STUDIO
ELECTRONICS: PIERRE GAUDET
PROGRAMMING: JOSÉE BROUILLARD
PLANTS: ÉRIC CHIASSON

COLLECTION OF QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES, MONTRÉAL.

Au-delà de la terre/ Landless Longitude is a moving image installation of a series of light mobiles and video projections together compose a galaxy of islands, meteorites and stars. The work explores notions of traveling (as opposed to images of travel) and the fluidity of place. Inspired by Calvino’s stories set in space, I built a series of paper-sculptures of meteors integrated in to light mobiles. The mobiles project the shadow of each meteor on to the surrounding walls and as they travel through the space, they interact with each other multiplying their shadows, affecting the visibility of the video projections and creating shadows of the viewers in the space.

The sea is a symbol of voyage, discovery and migration; it is an in-between place and a path to elsewhere. For someone in an island, it is also the frontier determined by the tides and a boarder between here and there. Like islands, meteors are isolated places and instead of water, they are surrounded by space. Meteors are objects in constant motion, travelers without a point of anchor their orientation keeps shifting. The installation attempts to capture the restlessness of being earthbound and the longing for the cosmic journey.

MOVING IMAGE INSTALLATION, LASER-CUT PAPER, PLASTIC, METAL, ELECTRONICS AND LIGHT, 2016.

ELECTRONICS AND MECHANICS: JONATHAN VILLENEUVE

Drawing, sculpture and material study for Au-delà de la terre/ Landless Longitude.

INK, PAPER, GLASS, CRYSTALS, WOOD AND METAL, 2015

This installation uses moving lights to animate the shadows of folded paper- airplanes on to the surrounding walls. Each paper-airplane is mounted on a motorized mechanism with individualized lights and suspended from the ceiling, they move concentrically in a programmed motion. As the planes smoothly circle the space, their enlarged shadows are cast in mirrored movement across the gallery walls and the bodies of viewers.

The paper-planes are carved by a laser cutter based on classic wallpaper designs allowing it to cast shadows of the lace-like pattern. Wallpaper is background and never foreground and historically used to imitate something else (i.e. velvet, murals, wood, etc.). The metaphors of wallpaper are analogous of shadows in their allusions to deception, illusion and what is hidden. This project explores the moving image as an installation and possibilities of shadow as evasive yet suggestive and always mercurial.

MOVING IMAGE INSTALLATION LASER-CUT PAPER, PLASTIC, METAL, ELECTRONICS, LIGHT AND SHADOW, 2013.

MECHANICS: JONATHAN VILLENEUVE
ELECTRONICS: PIERRE GAUDET

Review - Delgado, Jérôme. "Les supercheries de lumière de Pavitra Wickramasinghe." Le Devoir. Québec, Canada.

I filmed the frozen boats along the river in Dawson City in December during the shortest days of the year. I was drawn to the remoteness, isolation and the darkness of the Yukon winter. Because of the absolute stillness of Dawson, almost nothing in the scene moves and they appear to be photographs (instead of video) as if time is standing still. The long takes asks the viewers to be patient and give in to the meditative quality of the work. These vessels left immobile on land creates a type of eerie still life.

VIDEO, LENGTH: 6 MINUTES, 201

SOUND BY NELLY-EVE RAJOTTE

This installation incorporates a video projection of the sea, a sculpture of a ship and a timed light. The video of the sea is made with animation and found footage. The sculptural form of the ship is made of natural and crafted crystals, glass and metal and the sails of the ship are laser cut paper with an intricate lace like pattern. The ship is based on British tea-clippers used to transport tea from Sri Lanka to Europe. The light turns on at certain moments to simultaneously reveal the ship, project its shadow on to the screen and momentarily erase the video projection. This project explores shadow as an integral part of video installations and the possibilities of light and shadow to hide and reveal and its interpretation require some level of imagination.

The amplitude of a line-level audio signal embedded in the video triggers the light. When the audio tone comes on from the video player, the light turns on.

VIDEO INSTALLATION, HD-VIDEO/ANIMATION PROJECTION, FOUND NATURAL AND GROWN CRYSTALS, GLASS, METAL, ELECTRONICS, LIGHT AND SHADOW, 2012.

ELECTRONICS: DARSHA HEWITT

The capsized boat was found by chance on the north east coast of Sri Lanka. It was my second visit to the country where I grew up in twenty years. While I had clear memories of where I’m from, it is of course very different from reality and I was moved to see it with eyes of an adult. The overturned boat is a reminder of the destructions of a resent past- a world left up side down.

VIDEO, LENGTH: 3:20 MINUTES, 2012
SOUND BY OLIVIER GIROUARD

LA COLLECTION D'ŒUVRES D'ART DE LA VILLE DE MONTRÉAL.

This is part of an ongoing body of work started in 2012. These works start off as automatic drawings done with pen on paper. They are then used to create vector drawings, translating the organic hand gestures in to hard-straight lines. The vector drawings are curved in to paper-pads using a laser-cutter. Do to the process of the laser-cutter, the depth of the paper pad and the pages moving in the process of cutting, the final result is a drawing recording contingency of the hand and digital processes.

LASER-CUT PAPER-PADS, 2012-13.

PRIVATE COLLECTION.

This project explores the notion of still and moving images and human perception. I am interested in working with the boundary between fixed and unfixed that is exemplified in the ideology of cinema. Cinema historically has been a discussion between the notions of the still-not-moving and the still-yet-moving.

Each of the four windows has a lenticular drawing printed on clear acetate. And inside of the sightings box there is a diagonal wall with a printed wallpaper of vertical lines. When the viewer walks past the box, an optical effect will be induced making the still image appear to flicker. Because of the gaps between the line drawing (on the window) matching up with the lines of the diagonal wall (inside the vitrine), the image seem to flicker or move.

SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION FOR VITRINE, DIGITAL PRINT ON ACETATE AND PAPER, SIGHTINGS, GALERIE LEONARD ET BINA ELLEN, MONTRÉAL, 2014.