As the centenary celebrations of Ena de Silva draws to a close, a new exhibition of her work is on show at the Barefoot Loft Gallery. Titled, ‘Imagining New Natures – Collaborations with Ena’, this exhibition examines the design and inventive trajectories of textile and batik design in Sri Lanka among the works of Ena de Silva and her collaborators.
The exhibition focuses on Ena’s work with an emphasis on her collaborative approach of practice. It looks at the early phases of her work and presents work produced in collaboration with Anil Gamini Jaysuriya, Laki Sennanayake, Ismeth Rahim, Hema Dharmasena, and Padmini Jayasinghe. Seen together for the first time, the works in this exhibition illustrate how this collaborative approach along with experimentation with form and technique led to the creation of a new style of batik that challenge the histories of textiles.
27 October–9 November 2023
10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Barefoot Loft Gallery
8th lane, Colombo 03
Aluwihare Heritage Centre
A ‘pavement sale’ in 1961, under the porch of Ena de Silva’s house on Alfred Place is where it all began. She designed many of the fabrics along with her son Anil Gamini Jayasuriya and Laki Senanayake working from the courtyard and studio of her house. Overwhelming demand allowed Ena de Silva to open a shop in Colpetty selling cloth, clothing, and soft furnishings with workshops in Kotte and the suburbs.
Starting from the magnificent ceiling panels at the Bentota Beach Hotel and banners for the Lanka Oberoi her work would travel and be commissioned to adorn venues internationally. Some of the work for these projects was done in the garden of her father’s house, in Matale, where she later established the craft cooperative that came to be known as the Matale Heritage Centre - reviving traditional skills of wood carving and brass-casting in addition to batik and embroidery. and were constantly collaborating with architects and designers.
The key feature of the various establishments run by Ena de Silva was that they mostly employed women from the neighbourhood and it fitted into a strong belief around empowering women to be self reliant. After her passing in 2015, the name of the workshop was changed to the Aluwihare Heritage Centre to honour her family and village name and to start on a new chapter in its long history