How do we define humanity in an age of simulation?
Being Human considers the rise of the Sri Lankan contemporary art market in the wake of the country’s decades-long civil war, which ended with a massacre of Tamil civilians in 2009. The installation brings together Kulendran Thomas’s own works with artworks he purchased from galleries in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. Kulendran Thomas’s paintings and sculptures—composed using AI trained on the work of his Sri Lankan peers—metabolize the colonial art history that came to dominate in Sri Lanka after his family, who are Tamil, left escalating ethnic violence there.
The display is bisected by a video projection, immersing viewers in the layered realities and fictions that shape this gallery within a gallery. Made in 2019 with collaborator Annika Kuhlmann, the work interweaves documentary footage with AI-generated deepfakes of cultural figures attending the Colombo Art Biennale, founded during Sri Lanka’s short-lived era of postwar prosperity. Together, they ponder: What is the “human” protected by human rights? Is it a fiction from the West? Is there an alternative?
Organized by Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs.
