🐓 ARTRA’s Best of Emerging Artists 2023 : Poverty and Prosperity

Inspired by Lucknow, India, where he is currently pursuing his Master’s in Creative Painting, Mathiskumar’s exhibition serves as a window into his evolving artistic sentiments. Where he once utilised pigment ink, watercolour, and oils to explore the poignancy of man’s relationship with nature, Mathiskumar now wields repurposed fabric scraps and poly bags in a reinvented form of a painting style which remains rooted in his mixed-media origins. He uses bold and vibrant hues to challenge dominant perceptions of impoverished desperation while scrutinising the normality of class and wealth injustice within society’s architecture through the micro-setting of the slums of Lucknow.

Kopalapillai Mathiskumar

Kopalapillai Mathiskumar is a Sri Lankan contemporary artist hailing from Akkaraipattu on the country’s eastern coast. Utilising pigment ink and watercolour on board, oils on canvas, and mixed media, his works range from articulating his sentimental view of nature against man’s avarice to critiquing present-day disparity regarding class and wealth prejudice. Since graduating from the Eastern University (SVIAS) with a Bachelor’s degree in Visual and Technological Arts in 2015, Mathiskumar has participated in nine group art exhibitions by the ‘Non-Violent Artist Group’. Held in public spaces, these exhibitions encourage community engagement and interaction with the public via artistic expression in the Eastern & Northern Provinces. Mathiskumar has also worked on commission for the revered C. Anjalendran’s architecture projects, including that of an Ayurvedic spa. He is currently pursuing his Master’s in Creative Painting at the University of Lucknow, India, where he is now based.