Taking Artra boldly into its second decade
With an arts festival lined up - a celebration of Laki Senanayake on March 4 and 5, Azara Jaleel is brimming with plans for the future
Azara Jaleel is dressed in her signature black: black stiletto heels, elegant black net stockings visible through black split skirt, and black bag.
The founder and editor of Artra, the dedicated arts magazine confesses that she loves a ramble in the jungles of Yala and Wilpattu as much as she loves strolling through an urban gallery.
We meet her at Jetwing Colombo 7 to talk of her latest project, the art festival in March that is her brainchild: a celebration of Laki Senanayake at Jetwing Lighthouse on March 4 and 5. The location is aptly chosen, given the Galle hotel houses Laki’s biggest sculpture – the historic Randeniwala battle as the balustrade of its spiral stairway.
The festival is to coincide with the new issue of Artra which documents Laki, the brilliant artist of the Bawa set who enjoyed life to the hilt whether he was sculpting owls, writing verses or designing chandeliers in some rustic retreat.
Azara schooled at Methodist College and got a degree majoring in English from the Colombo University. After a childhood spent amidst books, she found herself drifting towards art. Her decisive moment was when she spotted the gap for a medium that focused on the ‘arts scene’ in Colombo- burgeoning but sans a regular dedicated chronicle to keep tabs.
Thus began the Artra magazine that has done no small job over 11 years in bringing to focus our art history.
The ’43 Group with its groundbreaking art which threw the filtered light of modernism on Ceylon was all a far cry from the contemporary art of
South Asia which was all about independence propaganda, says Azara.
Despite such moments of éclat (including later Bawa, Laki and the rest) she says we have not awakened to what we have done and what we can do.
Just as important as curating past and contemporary art icons is the work Artra does with emerging artists. During the Covid-19 period they came up with Artra Collection where upcoming artists are given a prominent platform and the chance to garner audiences.
Artra’s aim through the magazine is to connect new artists, art collectors and the big corporates. With its elegant minimalist design, the magazine also promotes cultural tourism for the country each time it is picked up from a coffee table.
As Azara says sanguinely on culture tourism, “Sri Lanka is (currently) in murky waters – but still very fertile soil.”
Meanwhile what keeps her busy outside Artra are scribbling (she is a closet poet) and escaping it all to inhale the wild freedom of forests and nature. She regularly visits the Belipola analog forest and a perk of her job is that she gets to spend time with people like Laki (he passed away last year), Anjalendran and Ismeth Raheem, veritable legends in the field of architecture and art history.
Her vision for Artra is to keep things dynamic and interdisciplinary, finding space for visual, performance, applied, written and even culinary arts.
Currently thoroughly excited about the upcoming Laki Senanayake art festival, she assures it will shine new light on this contemporary great.