Christopher Kulendran Thomas at FACT

Christopher Kulendran Thomas at FACT is an exploration of the legacies of imperialism and a close examination of the roots of Western individualism – in his new collection of works entitled Safe Zone, he asks ‘what does the world look like in the moments before it changes forever?’. Themes of global conflict and power underpin most of his works, while technology is the tool used to communicate his findings.

Peace Core (2024), which is the centrepiece of the FACT exhibition, is a new video work created in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. It is a rotating sphere of 24 screens that transmits a continuous stream of television footage, from the moments before TV channels cut live to the unfolding events of September 11. Peace Core was made using an AI algorithm that over 24,000 clips into an ever-evolving sequence.

Safe Zone also consists of a series of new paintings composed using AI tools, hand painted from a digital files. The paintings focus on the Sri Lankan ‘counterterrorism’ measures in the Tamil homeland of Eelam, previously the de facto self-governed state that artist’s family is from – measures sanctioned by the ‘war on terror’ which gave governments the opportunity to silence independence movements as terrorist organisations.

The exhibition is a complex one, with multiple narratives and technologies merging to tell an element of what is actually a very personal story of the artist’s heritage, while also revealing how momentous events that seem far away in time and place, continue to affect us.