Prince Claus Fund Biennial Symposium 2023 Legacies of Care, Failures and Emerging Solidarities

Lunuganga Terrace, © Geoffrey and Lunuganga Bawa Trusts. Photograph by Diluckshan Puviraj

The Prince Claus Fund is launching its first Biennial Symposium –– Collaborating with partners within various localities. The event facilitates South-to-South knowledge exchange and harnesses the potential of culture for fostering solidarity and positive societal change.

Practicing Care Through Resilience  and Regeneration

In collaboration with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, they welcome international and local partners for a three-day programme of keynotes, performances, tours and more. Titled “Legacies of Care, Failures and Emerging Solidarities” and curated in collaboration with renowned artistic director Keng Sen Ong, the Symposium aims to facilitate conversation and reflection on how arts and culture can address urgent societal challenges and stimulate international solidarity across global issues of climate, equity, and freedom. Beyond the global, the Symposium focuses on local research and employs a trans-local lens, to delve deeper into the urgencies of action and collaboration.
Taking the practice of care as a departure point for activating a sustainable and inclusive future co-existence, the Symposium focuses on the resilience and regeneration, with emerging and established cultural changemakers collectively investigating the ways of acting sustainably and responsibly, to create inhabitable societies in different localities. Enabling our failures to be a driving force for new beginnings, the Symposium aims to create long-lasting connections between cultural practitioners from Southeast Asia and worldwide. 

Featuring Renowned Intergenerational Global Artists

Joining the Symposium in Sri Lanka are one of the country’s leading architects, Channa Daswatte; renowned filmmaker, Anomaa Rajakaruna; accomplished artist and art historian, Thamotharampillai Sanathanan; choreographer and performance artist Venuri Perera; arts educator Sharareh Bajracharya; artist and curator Fadescha; visual artist and 2020 Prince Claus Laureate from Pakistan, Hira Nabi; renowned Bangladeshi photographer, activist, and longstanding Prince Claus Fund partner, Shahidul Alam; Nepali writer, publisher, and 2009 Prince Claus Laureate, Kanak Manit Dixit; visual artist and 2020 Principal Prince Claus Laureate, Ibrahim Mahama, and more. 
The Symposium will welcome the honorary member of the Prince Claus Fund's Board, HRH Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands who will have a conversation with Artistic Director Keng Sen Ong reflecting on the Fund's work and legacy, alongside the presentations of Prince Claus Seed Awardees Chathuri Nissansala, Parilojithan Ramanathan, Adit Dewan, Ankur, Arpita Akhanda, Debashish Paul, Moe Myat May Zarchi, Ujjwala Maharjan, Suranga Katugampala, Ammara Jabbar and Asad Ali Zulfiqar.

About the Prince  Claus Fund

Prince Claus Fund is an independent foundation dedicated to development through culture. With trust-based funding, connections and recognition they serve engaged artists in places where culture is under pressure.  By creating a global network of changemakers and amplifying the ground-breaking work they do they contribute to a more equitable, peaceful, sustainable and inclusive future. Because culture is a basic need for human progress.

About the Geoffrey Bawa Trust

The Geoffrey Bawa Trust is a non-profit, public trust that was established in 1982 by the late architect, with the objectives of furthering the fields of Architecture, the Fine Arts and Ecological and Environmental Studies.
 Since the architect’s passing in 2003, the Trust has sustained year-round public programmes comprising lectures, educational tours, scholarships, residencies and exhibitions which engage broader discourse on the built environment and the arts in both Sri Lanka and overseas.