windows, screens, mirrors
on the phenomenology of public transport
series | 2023-ongoing
Install view: windows,screens, mirrors, Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, 2025Back and forth between towns and jobs, weather and traffic, public transport demands a kind of surrender. One must find a seat to slump in, a window to lean against, a video to pass the time.
Drawing from these familiar encounters, Mayun Kaluthantri’s windows, screens, mirrors explores moments of rest and reflection. On frequent expressway trips to Colombo, weekly errands to Dickwella from his south coast home, and a recent journey to Jaffna, he glimpses exhaustion, weariness and respite.
Sleeping couple in southern expressway, 78x50cm, oil on canvas, 2025Sleeping passenger in Rajarata Regini express train, 50x78cm, oil on canvas, 2025Sleeping passenger in Tangalle bus, 60x90cm, oil on canvas, 2025Two sleeping passengers in Rajarata Regini express train, 60x90cm, oil on canvas, 2025Two passengers in Rajarata Regini express train, 60x90cm, oil on canvas, 2025Bus driver in Makumbura bus, 90x60cm, oil on canvas, 2025Passenger in Rajarata Regini express train, 90x60cm, oil on canvas,
2025Passenger two on Yarl Devi express train, 50x78cm, oil on canvas, 2025
Passenger on Yarl Devi express train, 60x90cm, oil on canvas, 2025Passenger in Dickwella bus, oil on linen, 60 x 90 cm, 2024Passegner in Denniyaya bus, oil on linen, 60 x 90 cm, 2024
The work chooses to look away from the exoticised maximalist aesthetics of the island’s public transport, instead turning toward the tender interiority of each subject. These quiet, luminous oil-on-canvas works sit with the reverie of going somewhere together, however briefly
While the recollections are fleeting, time slows and space expands through a focus on gestures of comfort. Small contortions and the softening of edges blur the limits of our self-contained worlds.
Sleeping passenger on southern express way bus, gouache on paper, 14.8x21cm, 2025Sleeping Passenger in Yarl Devi express train, gouache on paper, 14.8x21cm, 2025Two passengers on southern express way bus, gouache on paper, 14.8x21cm, 2025Sleeping passenger on Rajagirya bus, gouache on paper, 14.8x21cm, 2025Gesture 5, 11 x 16 cm,oil on card, 2025Gesture 4, 11 x 16 cm,oil on card, 2025Gesture 3, 11 x 16 cm,oil on card, 2025Gesture 2, 11 x 16 cm,oil on card, 2025 Gesture 1, 11 x 16 cm,oil on card, 2025
Here, in the pressing warmth, total individualism gives way to an intimate ambiguity. Surfaces that separate become translucent, porous and reflective. The story is unreadable yet something is passed along anyway, in shared immediacy.
Text by Priya Jay
Install view: windows,screens, mirrors, Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, 2025