Chathuri Nissansala (b.1993, Colombo) is a multidisciplinary artist working with performance art,painting, sculpture, and graphics. Their works raise poignant questions about notions of gender, class, queerness, and nationalism in Sri Lanka. A recipient of The Commonwealth Scholarship, South East Asia by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ICCR (2012), Chathuri acquired a Bachelor's in Fine Arts (Painting) from Chitra Kala Parishath, Bengaluru (2017) and a Master's in Visual Arts (Painting) from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara (2019).She’s been nominated for “The Emerging Artist Award (2022-23 years)”, by The Arts Family, London. A recipient of the year 2023, the ‘Prince Claus Seed Award’, by the Prince Claus Fund, Netherlands. Awarded the two year residency from the year 2024 at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Chathuri will be taking on the role of intersectional advisor for the ‘ Queer Stitches’ project at Textile museum , Tilburg Netherlands from 2024.
They have participated in various workshops and residences including ‘All right Angles’ residency by Colomboscope and Geoffrey Bawa Trust ( 2023) ; ‘Kal’, a collaboration between a district school in Berlin, Archive books, Goethe institute Karachi and Colombo(2021),‘ kal’ extension exhibited at 12 gates Philadelphia; “Naam” was a project collaborated with “WE ARE FROM HERE” collective generating conversation on preserving heritage sites and current political situation of displacement, a series of online discussions Chronicles of Confinement, organized by Hector Canonge, New York (2020); Artsathone, organized by British Council, Colombo, Sri Lanka (2019) and Body workshop, facilitated by Nikhil Chopra and Madhavi Ghore, organized by HH Artspace in collaboration with Asia Art Archive and Serendipity Art Foundation, Vadodara (2017).
They formed an initiative called ‘KAGUL’, which is an incubator for research on Sri Lanka’ Southern performative textile traditions and gender studies in them. KAGUL initiated a project called ‘FE’ to educate , create awareness and to create pockets of artisans as pockets of entrepreneurship (these pockets of artisans are from the marginal groups such as queer community,sex workers, women from rural areas). Nachchi Samayama is another collective project initiated by them to document, research and map the community called ‘Nachchi’. Nachchi’s is a term to address queer community used in the local folk language; these individuals have been existing for more than centuries as part of ritualistic acts in traditional and cultural domains.