Leela Bhūmi (Playful Earth), An Invitation to Play Differently

I cannot enjoy playing in the way others might. For me, the very nature of play is something deeper, more elusive. Play is not just a game; it is a world where I move with time, with ideas, with forms, bending them, twisting them like living things.

It is a dance with concepts, a joyful exploration where rules are meant to be questioned, where each brushstroke or installation becomes part of a larger, never-ending game of discovery. In this space of creation, of play, I find my truest expression as an artist.

This world began long before my studio, before exhibitions, before galleries. It began in the hills of my childhood — in the scent of forest soil, the whispers of wind, and long conversations with trees, plants, and animals.

My imaginary friends were born of the earth, the air, and the roots beneath my feet. My mother would smile and call me Kala Gadhai , “you smell like the forest.” That scent of green remains with me still, a memory laced with nostalgia, a belonging to something ancient, something timeless.

As we moved between the lush upcountry and the dry zone, each landscape became part of me, pulsing through my work like a drumbeat. The land’s stories taught me not only its beauty but also its wounds, scars left by colonization, industrialization, and exploitation: the British suppression of 1818, the Wasteland Act of 1840, the Green Revolution, the Mahaweli Scheme, Uma Oya.

These histories are not just past events. They are living, shaping our consciousness and our

ecologies today.

Leela Bhūmi was born from this soil, from memory and from roots. It is not simply an exhibition but a living, breathing space, mobile and transformative. It shifts between exhibition, workshop, and community hub, where stories are shared, knowledge is exchanged, and our ongoing relationship with the land, ecological memories, tangible and intangible heritage, and ethnobotanical knowledge can flourish.

Through installations, interactive art, and workshops, Leela Bhūmi invites us to heal together. It is a call to reconnect as caretakers, not conquerors, to honor ancient wisdom, to restore balance, and to imagine sustainable futures rooted in kinship with the earth.

This is an invitation.

Come, walk with me.

Play differently,

with the Land,

with memory,

with each other.

“Welcome to Leela Bhūmi [Playful Earth], a space where memory, play, and the earth intertwine. Step softly.