Rohan Amarasinghe

Rohan Amarasinghe brought a graphic designer’s hard, minimal line to a symbolist art of politics and heritage. His paintings turn on recurring signs, the naga or cobra above all, which he ties to the island’s ancient hydraulic civilisation and to the violence of its recent war.

He first exhibited in the late 1970s, in the aftermath of insurrection, then gave years to advertising before returning to painting with an exhibition in 1997. His is a rare instance in Sri Lankan art of a genuinely symbolist political narrative, spare, deliberate and legible.