Artist

Christopher Kulendran Thomas

Above: Joseph Kadow

Christopher Kulendran Thomas is an artist, of Tamil descent, who spent his formative years in London after his family left escalating ethnic oppression in Sri Lanka. He saw, mostly from a distance, how Sri Lanka’s colonial past continued to shape its art scene and began examining the entangled processes by which art and reality produce each other. Now working with advanced technologies across myriad disciplines, the artist’s studio is a fluid collaboration that brings together technologists, architects, writers, journalists, designers, musicians and activists from around the world. 

Kulendran Thomas’ work is represented in major collections like that of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Kunsthalle Zürich (2023); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2022); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2019); Institute for Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); Spike Island, Bristol (2019); and Tensta konsthall, Stockholm (2017). Kulendran Thomas’ work has been included in the 5th Timișoara Biennial (2023); the 2nd Front Triennial, Cleveland (2022); the 7th Bi-City Biennale, Shenzhen (2017); and the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 9th Berlin Biennale, and the 3rd Dhaka Art Summit (all 2016).