An Evening with Christopher Kulendran Thomas

Multidisciplinary artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas joins us for a screening of his recent work encompassing video and painting, often presented within immersive installations that speculate on our technologically mediated realities. The artist, who is based between Berlin and New York City, spent his early life in London after his family left escalating civil unrest and ethnic oppression in Sri Lanka. Kulendran Thomas, who is of Tamil descent, often returns to this history to examine its aftermath, particularly through socio-technological change and the Western world’s conceptualization of human rights, individual autonomy, and the nation state. Kulendran Thomas’s videos combine archival footage, found online videos, and AI-generated deepfakes resembling such cultural figures as Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian, to create multifaceted narratives on these entangled topics. The screening will include Being Human (2019)—also currently on view as an installation in the Museum’s second-floor collection galleries—which considers the rise of the Sri Lankan contemporary art market in the wake of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009). Kulendran Thomas will discuss the relationship between painting and video in his practice and will present excerpts from The Finesse (2022), which was recently included in the New Museum’s exhibition New Humans: Memories from the Future. It looks closely at the Tamil independence movement and the history leading up to its defeat in the wake of the “War on Terror” that followed 9/11. Kulendran Thomas will also show excerpts from Peace Core, shown at Wiels Brussels in 2024, a work of infinite duration that endlessly reedits and remixes the last moments of US television broadcasts before TV audiences were informed of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Finally, the artist will discuss work in progress for an upcoming project. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artist and Stuart Comer, MoMA’s Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance. Being Human. 2019. Sri Lanka. Directed by Christopher Kulendran Thomas in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. 24 min. Excerpts from The Finesse. 2022. Sri Lanka/Germany. Directed by Christopher Kulendran Thomas in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. Excerpts from Peace Core. 2024. USA. Directed by Christopher Kulendran Thomas in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann.