Pala Pothupitia grew up in a family of traditional craftsmen and ritual dancers in Deniyaya , Sri Lanka . Potupitya’s art is decorative and exotic. His works, though they are composed of very common and everyday kitsch material, are completed visual entities which present a sense of being recherché. This changing play of visualities is what makes his works ‘work’.
On one hand, they look like the headgear of ancient and traditional dancers, but closeup they are made of everyday kitsch . When these contradictory and competing visual metaphors are placed in a backdrop made of images of lions – as found in the national identity cards of the citizens of Sri Lanka – the entire visual text transforms itself into a comment/ critique on modernity, modernisation and being modern; or rather on the dilemma of being modern in Sri Lanka. from here.
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