Muhanned Cader

Kumana I, 2014 Oil on canvas 33 1/2″ x 33 1/2″

Muhanned Cader’s work emerges from a practice that is experimental and open-ended. His works have been influenced by his life in Sri Lanka and his education in Western artistic traditions of landscapes. Themes of post-colonialism, possession and control shape his works, which investigate the visual world. Working with the Sri Lankan landscape, both sociopolitical and natural, and the sea, Cader depicts scenes of daily life. His paintings bring in to focus his use of color and shape with precision mark-making. His drawings and collages seem to break free from their four-sided boundaries while remaining within the confines of the paper, done so using color blocking to separate the art from the support. Intimate and exquisitely rendered, Cader always retains an element of the handmade – making vivid the limitations as well the power of the human presence within the natural world.

Muhanned Cader was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1966, where he currently lives and works. He earned his Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. Since then, he has participated in several international projects. His work has been featured at the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; 1st Singapore Biennale; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; 1st Lahore Biennale, Pakistan; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; Devi Art Foundation, India; 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India; Herbert Johnson Museum at Cornell University, New York and Nasher Museum at Duke University, North Carolina.

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