uniform

“By the recent few paintings, I found that Uniform(s) are about tiredness.”
series | 2022 - 2024

Install view: Uniform, A4A Grant (exhibtion), Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo, 2024


This series features figures donned in archetypal, pseudo-uniforms: from a gold-adorned hardware shop owner to a mechanic with a lit cigarette and a salaryman slumped in a toilet cubicle —are they asleep? trying to sleep? resting? or simply longing for rest?

Theses work delves into these conditions—exploring what it means to exist within a society of acceleration, where exhaustion and uniformity are inextricably linked. These paintings question what it means to conform, to ‘hustle,’ to be relentlessly driven, yet profoundly tired.

Recalling everyday encounters, these paintings warp, and freeze figures in mid-gesture, removing them from their roles as uniformed subjects, typically bound to endlessly perform, from one task to another. 

What can these figures, in their stillness and their struggle as “chronic entrepreneurs [of themselves]” (Byung-chul Han, 2008) tell us about how we labor, how we rest and how we identify in a society bordering burn-out but yet demanding ceaseless achievement?

Uniform #16,
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024
Uniform #7,
Gouache and pastels on paper, 25 x 18 cm, 2023
Uniform #13,
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024
Uniform #7,
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024
Uniform #3,
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024
Uniform #6, 
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024
Uniform #11,
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024
Uniform #12
Gouache and pastels on paper, 84 x 60 cm, 2024


Uniform #11,
Gouache and pastels on Paper, 59 x 42 cm, 2023
Uniform #11,
Gouache and pastels on Paper, 59 x 42 cm, 2023


Install view: “Small Unifroms” , A4A Grant (preview), Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo, 2024
- Gouache and Pastels on Paper, 25 x 18 cm x 8 works