Kumkum. Kumkum Fernando. What a name! ‘He’s the only Kumkum Fernando in the entire universe,’ his father, Ajith ‘Ajja’ Fernando, philosopher and traveler, pointed out. No, exclaimed. I put down the tone to paternal pride, but then again, he has every reason to be proud of his son. And then, yet again, all Sri Lankans can also be proud of young Kumkum Fernando.
The young man, in his early thirties, is among the very few artists invited to feature installations at the prestigious Coachella Music and Art Festival later this month. The curators apparently ‘scour the globe for artists, architects and designers to transform the Empire Polo Field,’ a golfing facility located in the Coachella Valley of Southern California.
There’s more: ‘Newly-commissioned, large scale art installations offer fans art as landmark, public space and icon — to be viewed from perspectives as diverse and dynamic as Coachella’s lineup of performers.’ In short, you need to be among the very best in the world in terms of creative excellence to be featured.
What Kumkum has achieved so far is remarkable. His father collected antiques and curiosities; Kumkum says he collected stones, spoons, statues, masks, and other ancient marvels and treasures. He has always been fascinated with the world of gods, giants, demons and aliens. Jonatha LeVine observes that Kumkum ‘proudly derives inspiration from this heritage, bridging fine art and design with a deep appreciation for ancient and traditional forms.’
It’s not just a fascination with the past though. : Vân Anh Nguyen following an interview with Kumkum for Monopo, Saigon, noted that for Kumkum ‘history contains lyrical messages, and his creative job is nothing but to translate them into what the future can truly appreciate.’
Design by Reborn, which he founded, truly embodies this. Speaking on his first solo show ‘Temples, gods and robots,’ Kumkum explains ‘Reborn’: ‘It’s about bringing something from the past and turning the found materials into contemporary art objects. Sometimes, they can represent the future like those robot-looking sculptures. It's history, it’s people from the past, it’s what makes us who we are now.’ He says he’s fascinated by comparative religion and philosophy and that art is his platform to explore them.
And it’s all part time. In his ‘day job,’ he is the creative director of Ki Saigon, the advertising agency he co-founded almost ten years ago with Indraneel Guha who he met when they both worked for Lowe Vietnam. Kumkum had already been recognised for his advertising skills, securing a gold and two bronze lions for Lowe Vietnam at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2014.
That year he also won the award offered by Ad Age for the best cover, the submission being used for the issue of the magazine that is distributed at the Cannes. The brief: show the meaning of creativity. He created an installation ‘to show that everything is connected in the contemporary world,’ explaining that he felt that brands also have an invisible line connecting them to each other.’
Kumkum Fernando is a storyteller. A multi-media storyteller. Stories are important to him because ‘[they are] like the soul of each tangible object.’ The futuristic artworks featured at the Singapore Art Museum, Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts and at the Jonathan LeVine Projects in New Jersey are all stories where he draws lyrical messages from history and ‘translates them into what the future can truly appreciate,’ as he once told Lankaweb.
‘Each story contains the concept of the world surrounding them. For example, I used to collect wood from demolished old houses in Saigon and turn them into toys in the “Toys with History” Series. You can also tell from the name “Reborn '', it’s about bringing something from the past and turning the found materials into contemporary art objects. Sometimes, they can represent the future like those robot-looking sculptures. It's history, it’s people from the past, it’s what makes us who we are now.’
Kumkum has come a long way from creating art installations for cafes and bars using objects he’s collected since he was a child including World War II circuit boards, antique spoons and African masks. It has certainly been a fascinating journey from St Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, through RMIT, Australia where he studied creative advertising and movie-making, Grants McCann, Colombo and Lowe Vietnam to Ki Saigon and Design by Reborn. There’s a lot more to come, obviously.
For now, though, Kumkum, with an 80 foot tall creation, has offered another chapter of a story he’s being narrating since the time he was a small child, scribbling on walls, drawing aliens and telling his parents, ‘don’t ask me to become and doctor or an engineer; I want to make films.’ He has essentially installed something Sri Lankan (and of course Vietnam and other parts of the universe from which he collects objects that fascinate and inspire) in the California desert.
Papa Fernando is justifiably proud. So are we all.
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