Rajni Perera expands on her visionary 'Traveller' series of paintings, pollution wear and sculpture for both a large-scale exhibition in Eastside Projects’ main gallery and a public mural on the eastern banks of the River Rea on the edge of Highgate and Balsall Heath.

Set after the end of white suprematism and ecological collapse, Perera’s ongoing series builds a complex, energised diaspora of climate refugees, habitats and survival mechanisms set against rapidly transforming landscapes. Perera’s travellers are imagined as ‘immigrant futures’, the artist’s science fiction metaphor for cross border resilience. The mutated bodies of the travellers indicate an evolutionary timescale thousands of years into the future, yet their humanoid shapes still connect them to earthly pasts. Escaping from a planet no longer able to support human life, and extending out of this world, and into space, each character occupies future worlds with a noble confidence and intelligence, interconnected through self and community knowledge maintained and valued as living culture.

About the Artist

Rajni Perera (b.1985, Sri Lanka) lives and works in Toronto. She explores issues of hybridity, futurity, ancestorship, immigration identity/cultures, monsters and dream worlds. All of these themes marry in a newly objectified realm of mythical symbioses. In her work she seeks to open and reveal the dynamism of the icons and objects she creates, both scripturally existent, self-invented and externally defined. She creates a subversive aesthetic that counteracts antiquated, oppressive discourse, and acts as a restorative force through which people can move outdated, repressive modes of being towards reclaiming their power.

Website: eastsideprojects.org

Generously supported by Arts Council England and The National Lottery Heritage Fund