One Hundred Thousand Small Tales  took its name from a poem by the Tamil poet Cheran, where he writes about how a "‘bridge, strengthened by its burden of a hundred thousand tales, collapses within a single tear.” This exhibition was imagined as an inventory of materials that bring about the bridge’s collapse. In so doing, the exhibition imagined how the burden of countless tales might be archived into an exhibition before a single tear - in this case, of a page from a history book - renders them forgotten. To this end, this exhibition addressed the artistic output that bore witness to the many narratives, episodes and accounts of what has taken place in Sri Lanka during it’s recent history. While the exhibition, like the bridge in Cheran’s poem, gained its strength by the weight of tales it carries, it simultaneously acknowledged how the burden of representation threatened to bring about it’s own downfall.

Part archive and part inventory, One Hundred Thousand Small Tales aimed to provide a starting point for mapping out the various paths of art production in the country from the lead up to Sri Lanka’s independence - which took place in 1948 - to the present. This exhibition included several generations of artists and incorporated archival materials in addition to works on paper, paintings, photographs, film, sculpture and animation.

Artists List:

A. Mark

Anoli Perera

Arjuna Gunarathne

Aubrey Collette

Bandu Manamperi

Cassie Machado

Channa Daswatte, Asanga Welikala and Sanjana Hattotuwa

Chandragupta Amarasinghe

Chandraguptha Thenuwara

G. Samvarthini

Godwin Constantine

Ieuan Weinman

Jagath Weerasinghe

Kannan Arunasalam

Kingsley Gunatillake

Kusal Gunasekara

Laki Senanayake

Laleen Jayamanne

Lionel Wendt

M. Vijitharan

Manori Jayasinghe

Muhanned Cader

Nayanananda Wijayakulathilake

Nilani Joseph

Nillanthan Pradeep

Thalawatte

Ruhanie Perera

S. H. Sarath

Sarath Kumarasiri

Stephen Champion

Sujeewa Kumari

Sumudu Athukorala, Sumedha Kelegama and Irushi Tennekoon

Tilak Samarawickrema

Tissa De Alwis

Tissa Ranasinghe

T. Krishnapriya

T. Shanaathanan

T. P. G. Amarajeewa

W. J. G. Beling