On the surface, Praveen ‘Prathi’ Theekshana appears to be another easygoing third-year student at the Moratuwa University. But beneath that carefree exterior lies a provocateur — an artist eager to disrupt an indifferent society.
Prathi is among the new-wave of culture jammers we’ve seen who are deconstructing narratives, going as far as countering the so-called ‘counter culture’.
Muse caught Prathi walking into Lake House and decided to ask him how he was doing.
Q: First things first, what drove you into art?
Prathi: My eagerness for self expression and my need to re-interpret things. I slip into my delusions and keep rethinking, until I feel like creating. I have experimented with different mediums such as the visual, audio, video, writing and animation. The most interesting thing for me was images; 2D and 3D. That’s how it started.
Q: You chose fashion design as your preferred medium?
Prathi: I started experimenting with digital media then I transitioned into textile and fashion; which is tangible, not 2D, not in a virtual space.
The way I’m trying to interpret my expressions and experimentation in textile and fashion is not limited to a visual plane, rather the physical feel of the fabric; the way it moves and how it interacts with the body.
I also study how fashion interacts with society and how clothes and the wearer exist.
Q: How does your art explore the realm of national identity?
Prathi: My work mainly focuses on contemporary Sri Lankan history and nationalism. I see nationalism in terms of the melting pot of cultures that came here. Colonisation is not exclusive to the West; the Indians did it as well and we are the result of all that. We combined all these different elements brought by diverse cultures and countries and made it our own.
One of the things I’m researching is Sri Lankan ritual culture, especially those Down South which have folk deities such as Pattini. These are stories about foreign merchants and invaders who came to Sri Lanka and we re-interpreted them as ‘Sri Lankan folk stories’ and ‘Sri Lankan gods’ but are in fact, re-imagination of events that happened in our past.
Judging by their language, clothes and customs, the natives viewed these foreigners as very alien, but nevertheless interacted with them.
We should celebrate these influences and appreciate how we integrated them into our own culture. This chaotic amalgamation we are still experiencing is the Sri Lankan identity.
Q: Thoughts on AI?
Prathi: It’s a very good tool. We saw it coming, even a few decades ago. People were writing science fiction about AI and now it has happened. As an artist, it is not something you should worry about. If you want to try it go ahead, if you don’t then continue whatever you’re doing.
Pop Art entered the scene and then came along Computer-aided Design (CAD) software. Before CAD software, people designed graphics by hand and there was nothing called “digital art”. Even though we have digital art now, people still make and sell watercolours and oil paintings.
Graphic design, digital media, digital artwork, 3D work and digital music are the next steps and you don’t have to adopt and forcefully include them in your works.
Q: What are you trying to convey to the public?
Prathi: My work in fashion and textile begs the questions: “What are the possibilities with your clothes?”
The biggest thing here are my experiments in ‘Dress Politics’, which studies how society treats and communicates with you according to the way you dress and your preferred brands.
For example, let’s say you are just wearing a trouser and a t-shirt in public. Nobody is even going to notice you. But say if you wear a proper tuxedo suit, people will actually notice you. Now let’s say you hail a tuk tuk or talk to a shopkeeper, they will call you ‘sir’. In casual clothing, they will call you ‘bro’, ‘malli’. ‘ayyia’ or ‘machang’.
Now say you wear something experimental in public such as a balaclava, a very experimental textile or accessory. People will go completely nuts and its kind- of -fun to watch.
For example, I was wearing one of my designs called ‘mask of desire’ at a party, it was the second design in the headwear series I was doing. I met my friend and he was like: “I don’t want to talk to you because I can’t see your face and I’m very confused. I just can’t talk to you,” and just went away.
It’s a political game; its power dynamics – you can play with that according to your dress.
Q: Can straight guys become fashion designers?
Prathi: (Laughs) That question has a lot of incorrect terms such as how do you define ‘straight’ but that will lead us to a completely different conversation.
There is nothing wrong in being queer and doing art, but there is this assumption that women and queer people run the global fashion industry.
Let’s take the history of male fashion in Sri Lanka for example – in specific, the colonial and post-colonial period. Our men wore sarongs, trousers, shirts, t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts and loincloths. And what did women wear? The osariya, malahatha, skirts, blouse, t-shirt, shirt, miniskirts, pants and many variations of everything; it all came with the objectification of women.
There was this patriarchal notion that women need to dress to impress.
But why are queer people in the fashion industry? Queers don’t fit the masculine-feminine binary. Androgynous queers and non-binary people are gender fluid, so they are more versatile when it comes to experimenting with fashion.
It’s all about identity. If someone feels feminine, they would tend to wear feminine outfits. They will feel authentic about that. And that’s how they get more experiences, helping them create something out of those experiences.
Pix: Praveen Theekshana
