Saskia Fernando Gallery

Before 2009, contemporary Sri Lankan art had no dedicated professional home, no gallery built specifically around representing living, working local artists on an international stage. Saskia Fernando Gallery changed that, and has since grown into the largest and most influential contemporary art space in the country.

Professionalising Sri Lanka’s Contemporary Art Scene

When Saskia Fernando founded her eponymous gallery in 2009, contemporary Sri Lankan art existed, but it lacked a dedicated, professional platform to represent it consistently, both to local audiences and to the wider international art world. Fernando set out to change that, building a gallery focused specifically on living Sri Lankan artists, whether based on the island or working from the diaspora, and treating their work with the same institutional seriousness given to contemporary artists anywhere else in the world.

The gallery grew steadily from that starting point into what is now widely described as the largest free-standing contemporary art gallery in Sri Lanka, holding a rotating programme of exhibitions alongside an extensive stored collection, reportedly numbering in the hundreds of available works, that visitors can request to view beyond whatever happens to be on the walls at a given time.

Beyond the Gallery Walls

Saskia Fernando Gallery’s ambitions have always extended past its physical space in Colombo. It has shown work at international fairs and exhibitions in London, Singapore, Dubai, Los Angeles and New Delhi, helping build recognition for Sri Lankan contemporary artists on a genuinely global stage rather than treating them as a purely local or regional interest. The gallery has also built cultural programming beyond exhibitions themselves, including public talks, fundraisers, and initiatives supporting emerging artists financially through partnerships like the A4A Production Fund.

More recently, the gallery merged with Paradise Road Galleries, one of Sri Lanka’s other major art institutions, founded in 1998 and known for showcasing modernist masters like Lionel Wendt and George Claessen. The combined entity, Paradise Road Saskia Fernando Gallery, now operates across two Colombo locations, bringing together contemporary practice with the country’s modernist art legacy under one umbrella.

Visiting Tips

• Check current exhibition listings before visiting, since the gallery’s programme rotates regularly.
• Ask staff about viewing additional stored works if the current exhibition doesn’t fully capture your interest.
• Combine with a wider look at Colombo’s art scene, including the Green Path open-air art market and the long-running Barefoot Gallery on Galle Road.
• Entry is generally free, making it an easy, low-commitment stop on a Colombo sightseeing day.

A Gallery That Changed How Sri Lankan Art Is Seen

Fernando has spoken about founding the gallery as being about more than exhibiting art, it involved genuinely shifting how contemporary Sri Lankan work was perceived, both by local audiences accustomed to more traditional art forms and by an international art world that had rarely engaged seriously with the country’s living artists. Building relationships with major international fairs and institutions over more than fifteen years has gradually repositioned Sri Lankan contemporary art from a niche regional curiosity into a recognised part of the broader South Asian art conversation, a shift the gallery continues to push forward through newer initiatives like KALĀ, a platform specifically built to connect South Asian art communities both on the island and across the diaspora.

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