Art.Salon

Colomboscope’s 9th edition Rhythm Alliances 2026 was the largest edition of the festival to date, with over 100 interdisciplinary artists and contributors spread across several locations in Colombo. After 15 months of defining the curatorial premise, mentorship of artists and collaborations with cultural practitioners and institutional partnerships, Colomboscope presented more than 35 newly commissioned works and devoted 10 days to rhythm and its interdisciplinary soundscapes embodying remembrance, dissent, and renewal.

The exhibitions and the program including listening sessions, performances, workshops, curated walk-throughs, moderated discussions, concerts, and film screenings were highly sensitively coordinated, creating their own frequency of shared experience, co-creation, and participation. Conceived as an attunement to the diverse dispositions of rhythm, Rhythm Alliances became a celebration of contrasts that blossomed into dialogue and alliance building.

...

Language and orature are integral aspects of rhythm, apart from the sonic and performative aspect of it- Rhythm here is recalled and remembered, those inherited and passed on as legacies, and formed as dissent, ones created anew for the contemporary moment - a creation of new vocabulary. So whether it is through mark making or through scores or through doing embroidery or drawing, each language formation is acknowledged and cited. If you experience Seher Shah’s monographs, Woven Nights, you witness minimalist mark making that creates scores, mapping geographies of belonging.