Tilak Samarawickrema is an architect, artist and designer from Sri Lanka. From Milan to New York Tilak has pursued his passion for textile design, synthesizing the traditional and the modern, the local and the universal. Tilak began his journey with textiles in 1990 with his UNICEF consultancy in Guatemala where he lived and worked with Mayan Indian weavers to design and develop products for international markets. Returning to Sri Lanka he began developing a new aesthetic in tapestry design and began a long-standing relationship with traditional weavers of Thalagune Udu-dumbara, the oldest weaving village in Sri Lanka. He has drawn from visual forms deeply rooted in local traditions, infused them with a modern aesthetic and taken the product to an international market through personal exhibitions at the leading design museums such as Deutsches Textilmuseum in Krefeld (1995) and Norsk Form Design Museum in Oslo (1998). He also adapted the design aesthetic of his hand-woven cotton tapestries to develop a range of products including floor carpets for Editore of Langenthal, Switzerland and industrially knitted fabrics for the fashion industry. For many years the MOMA Design Store in New York carried Tilak’s tapestries.  As Pierre Restany, the renowned French critic wrote in the catalog of the Deutsches Textilmuseum Krefeld “A chronicle of Sinhalese history parades in his language of modernity. Tilak has become one of the masters of contemporary textile art without renouncing his roots, but rather, by actualizing their specificity" (1995). From 1st to 17th April 2011 Samarawickrema will be exhibiting his hand woven tapestries at Gallery Art Motif in New Delhi.

 

Tapestries – Personal exhibitions
2011 – Modern woven art. Gallery Art Motif, New Delhi.
2009 - Contemporary Sri Lankan Textile Artists, ( collective) American Center, Colombo
1998 - Norsk Form. Museum for Design and Architecture, Oslo.
1997 - Gallery Mount Castle, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
1995 - Design Gallery Cappellini, Via Monte Napolieone Milan.
1995 - Deutsches Textilmuseum Krefeld Germany.
1994 - Galerie Smend, Colgne.
1994 - Design Center, Brussels
1992 - Case Tessuti Lucerne, Switzerland
1992 - Werkgalerie Steinmann, Lucerne, Switzerland.
1992 - SHED Design Gallery, Milan.