🖌️ Mahagama Sekera, post-independence Sri Lanka’s renaissance iconoclast – artist, poet, novelist, lyricist, playwright, filmmaker – passed away, as quietly as he had lived, 50 years ago on January 14th, 1976, leaving behind a diverse and unique body of work that is unmatched in the nation’s recent history.
🎨 To mark this anniversary, the Alliance Française de Colombo has collaborated with the Mahagama Sekera Archives to present an exhibition of his paintings titled “The Art of Mahagama Sekera”, on the 14th and 15th January 2026 from 9.00 am till 5.00 pm.
🌍 The paintings, which cover two decades of his artistic development, in turn become the occasion for a new assessment of Mahagama Sekera’s contribution to Sri Lankan humanities, which also traces the international dimensions of his oeuvre. In his commemorative lecture, “Their burden did I own”: the patient genius of Mahagama Sekera, Prof. Arjuna Parakrama will speak on the delicate artistic interweaving and creative synergies across Mahagama Sekera’s work, while locating him in the broader global post-colonial intellectual tradition. ___________________________________
