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Dr Edwin Coomasaru is a Visiting Research Fellow from 1 September 2025 to 31 July 2026.
Dr Edwin Coomasaru is a historian of modern and contemporary British, Irish, and Sri Lankan art. He is currently writing a book on Queer Ecologies and Abundant Aesthetics in Sri Lankan Art, 1926-2024. Coomasaru is a Mid-Career Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Reviews Editor for Visual Culture in Britain journal, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bristol. Coomasaru has written for Art History, Third Text, Oxford Art Journal, The Irish Review, Irish Studies Review; as well as numerous edited books, exhibition catalogues, and art criticism. He has previously been awarded Postdoctoral and Research Fellowships at the University of Edinburgh, the Paul Mellon Centre, and the Courtauld Institute of Art (where he completed his PhD).
Queer Ecologies and Abundant Aesthetics in Sri Lankan Art
Dr Coomasaru's project considers how Sri Lankan artists crafted a queer aesthetic of erotic and environmental abundance between 1926 and 2024, at a time when British colonial rule or post-independence ethnic conflict weaved land and social relations through structures of scarcity. Britain criminalised homosexuality for the first time in 1883 as ‘against the order of nature’: legislation still on the statute books, and even extended in 1995, with the Sri Lankan Parliament announcing decriminalisation plans in 2023. Drawing together methodologies from queer studies, decolonial theory, and ecological Marxism – the project will consider how an imaginary of redistributing collective identities and resources was built through the work of David Paynter, Lionel Wendt, Bevis Bawa, Mahen Perera, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Chathuri Nissansala, and Shenuka Corea.
