Rupaneethan Pakkiyarajah

RUPANEETHAN PAKKIYARAJAH
(b. Batticaloa, Sri Lanka)

Rupaneethan Pakkiyarajah’s practice engages landscape as a site through which questions of connectivity, identity, and ecological transformation are examined. His works function as reflections on the networks that structure contemporary life, drawing from the visual presence of electrical and telephone wires that traverse rural and urban environments. These systems of connection become both subject and metaphor within his practice, revealing the ways in which infrastructures shape relationships between people, places, and the natural world. Through this, he examines how notions of belonging and collective identity are negotiated within landscapes marked by political, social, and environmental change.

Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, Pakkiyarajah develops visual languages informed by observation of the post-war Sri Lankan landscape. Recurring motifs of networks, boundaries, and terrain articulate tensions between connection and division, development and displacement. His works frequently consider the consequences of human intervention within the environment, where expanding infrastructures coexist with the erosion of forests, ecosystems, and traditional ways of inhabiting the land. Landscape in his practice is not approached as a passive backdrop but as an active field in which histories of caste, class, ethnicity, religion, and territory are embedded. Through these investigations, he explores the possibility of interdependence and shared futures across social and geographic divisions.

Pakkiyarajah completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Design (Sculpture) from the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 2016 and later completed the online programme Public Art Practice in Place-Shaping at the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan (2020). He currently teaches Sculpture and Drawing at the Swami Vipulananda Institute of Aesthetic Studies, Eastern University, Sri Lanka. His exhibitions include In Search for Connectivity at Paradise Road Galleries, Colombo (2021); Extending Space of the Palace, 9th URONTO Art Residential Exchange Programme, Naogaon, Bangladesh (2019); Connectivity and Reflexivity of Nature and Me at Celebrate Colombo – One Won Exhibition, Colombo (2019); My Inner Land, A Timeless Heritage, Tolworth Recreation Centre, United Kingdom (2019); Identity: Being and Becoming at Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo (2018); Mother Land at Colomboscope, Colombo (2017); and Painting and Sculpture at the Government Teachers’ Training College, Batticaloa (2015). He has also participated in numerous collaborations with artists and institutions in Sri Lanka and internationally.

Pakkiyarajah lives and works in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.