Gunindu Abeysekera

Gunindu “Guni” Abeysekera is a Sri Lankan-American artist and scholar. Born in Sri Lanka, Guni moved to the US with his family in the year 2000 when he was 2 years-old. Therefore, much of his creative and academic work regard the experiences of immigrant artists using their practice to cultivate memories of their homelands and diasporic identities. Guni earned his BA in Film and Media Studies at UCI in 2018, his MA in Asian American Studies at UCI in 2019, and is currently a fifth-year PhD candidate in Culture and Performance at UCLA. His MA work focused on the performance of Bharatanatyam in California, and his current PhD work is a comparative analysis of how the British visually represented Sri Lankan dance during the colonial period and how the Sri Lankan government represents them now in the postcolonial period. Guni’s main creative practice is through photography and filmmaking, but he is also a graphic designer, poet, dramaturg for various performances, and beginner Kandyan drummer and dancer. He enjoys collaborating with South Asian artists in the diaspora and now in Sri Lanka as well.