I was born in 1971, the year the military cracked down on a Marxist youth uprising for the first time in our noble history. 20,000 young men and women died. I entered high school in 1989; the year paramilitary death squads crushed another abortive youth revolution. 60,000 young people 'disappeared'. All my adult life, I have lived in the shadow of a separatist war. 17 years of fighting between the security forces and Tamil Tiger rebels in northern Sri Lanka. Another 60,000 young men have lost their lives due to the politics of ethno-centric nationalism.

It is an understatement that young people in Sri Lanka are facing a crisis. An outmoded system of education, unemployment, widening economic disparity, political violence, the breakdown of law and order… The psychological impact of decades of false promises and shattered dreams has been devastating. Young people are feeling oppressed, misled and cheated. Their spirits are crushed and diminished. Are they doomed to a trivial existence of hedonistic escapism and passive conformity? Is there any hope for self-liberation?

My struggle as a young artist is a journey in search of that hope. How can contemporary Sri Lankan youths recover their idealism, energy and confidence?

During my undergraduate art history studies, my imagination was captivated by a masterpiece of sculpture that epitomized, for me, the ideal of youthful vigor Michelangelo’s David. What I could not find in my own rich cultural heritage, I found in the universal heritage of humankind. I see in the biblical figure -who overcomes the brutish militarism of Goliath and the paranoid antagonism of Saul- an inspiring tenacity of will, an earthy spirituality and a full-blooded lust for life. And I see in Michelangelo’s David a powerful icon of youthful beauty, vitality and idealism.

My first solo exhibition, entitled Contemporary Youth, was entirely devoted to exploring the David theme. I wanted to use David as an icon that would inspire and refresh my beleaguered generation to new aspirations. But I realized in the process of this exploration that there existed a huge gulf between the iconic ideal and even I myself. Even I, who saw in David the promise of idealism and desired to offer him as an archetype to my peers, could not rise to the challenges implicit in such a beckoning. And so, as the centerpiece of the entire exhibition, I placed myself, in an enactment of performance art, bound up at the base of one of my David’s, unable to free myself

Folk wisdom says, "Though it blossoms in the mud, the lotus is pure." In my last exhibition, I set out to interpret this aphorism. I proposed that there was a secret to the lotus' purity. Because the marshes are the graves of countless murdered youths. The country's rivers and lakes were the paramilitary's favourite means of disposing of their murdered victims. Now the lotuses mark the graves. The grim and violent secret cannot be hidden. Like flags, the lotuses signal the truth. In Asian art, the lotus is a symbol of perfection. Hindus, Buddhists and Nestorian Christians have all used it in their sacred art. Here is another icon of hope. Just as the lotus emerges from the murky depths to blossom, so the youth of the nation must rise through the darkness of their circumstances and realize their dreams.

"Young people are like butterflies" is another common saying. The sense is clear- youthfulness means to be carefree, innocent, beautiful. But I suspect a dark side to this observation because it equates youth to naiveté and powerlessness. The status quo would like to lull young people into the stupor of self-indulgence and frivolous pursuits. The centerpiece of that exhibition was a fiberglass statue of myself contemplating a self-portrait covered with a convergence of butterflies, and a sign reading 'Get up'. The image of the butterfly is superimposed in an attempt to foist upon us a contrived 'global' youth culture mass marketed by the entertainment and fashion cartels of the west, to replace our individual identities with a cloying stereotype. This is an enticing charade to keep us from thinking seriously about our lives, out of politics, making our voices heard and preventing us from taking charge of our destinies. Butterflies are weak, ineffective creatures. Even a whole cluster of butterflies cannot have the effect of a single bee. I used the symbol of the butterflies ambiguously. Yes, we must be free. But we must not be superficial.

I am an artist. Whatever contribution I feel compelled to make to my society, to my generation, I must make as an artist. This is who I am. This is my work. This is my journey. I have only begun.