Sri Lankan artist challenges Swiss museums over looted heritage

Documenting Sri Lankan artifacts stored in Basel: it was just supposed to be a research for an art project that became a film that became a diplomatic conundrum. soap factory films

The award-winning documentary Elephants & Squirrels by Swiss filmmaker Gregor Brändli chronicles a Sri Lankan artist’s discovery of looted artefacts in Basel and her mission to return them to Sri Lanka, exposing Switzerland’s uneasy reckoning with its colonial entanglements. 

Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige is a Sri Lankan-born artist, based in France, who’s on a mission. After spotting looted cultural artefacts belonging to the indigenous Wanniyala-Aetto in the archives of the Museum der Kulturen Basel [Basel Museum of Cultures] and the Natural History Museum Basel, she embarked on a quest to return these valuable objects to their homeland.
 
In his illuminating debut documentary Elephants & SquirrelsExternal link, Swiss filmmaker Gregor Brändli captures her painstaking attempts to initiate a process of cultural restitution, which involves stolen works of art, ceremonial masks, the remains of people and even of animals — hence the curious film title.

Piumakshi Veda Arachchige (1980) was born and grew up in Kurunegala, Sri Lanka: “My artistic practice runs along a thin line which separates art and activism; it is my intent to play with this tension.” soap factory films

Her quest turns out to be a massive undertaking, met with misgivings and scepticism by the Swiss art world, where curators and museum directors have not yet fully reckoned with Switzerland’s hidden colonial past.

Following the recent International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK LeipzigExternal link), where Elephants & Squirrels was awarded a “Silver Dove” for best documentary feature, the duo spoke to Swissinfo about their years-long collaboration and shared mission.

Spiritual power

“These are not mere objects,” Piumakshi Veda Arachchige says, referring to the invaluable Sri Lankan heritage taken by the Swiss cousins Paul and Fritz Sarasin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from what was then known as Ceylon.

“They were created by human hands, born from love and energy,” she says. “For instance, in ancient times hand-crafted masks were not just worn; they served important purposes for healing, rituals, and fostering cultural identity. One actually needed to be recognised by tradition first, before earning the right to wear such a mask and perform. So these artifacts are energetic bodies in themselves.”

In one of the most impressive scenes from Elephants & Squirrels, the artist puts on one of the ceremonial masks hidden away in the Basel archives. It’s a powerful moment: for the first time in centuries, this act lets the spiritual dimensions of the sacred artwork flow through someone of Sri Lankan descent again.

Even when a mask like that is carefully preserved in a European archive, Piumakshi Veda Arachchige argues that it is robbed of its sacred energies. “These qualities are disregarded when a scientist handles an artifact,” she says. “They simply see it as a decorative piece and put it in a completely different context. It’s like removing a heart from a person and storing it away. When I was wearing that mask, I sensed its vibrations, because it had finally served its purpose again.”

The release of spiritual meaning: putting on the mask after a century of oblivion. soap factory films

Similarly, the Sri Lankan artist describes the sensation of holding an ancestral skull for the first time “as if a person were speaking to me in another dimension, another language”.

These symbolic gestures perfectly encapsulate the conflict at the heart of Elephants & Squirrels: how the emotional appeal of an artist for restitution clashes with the scientific rationale of the institutions. Ultimately, they want to keep housing these artefacts in their archives in the name of science and preservation.

Hitting a wall

Although the art world is slowly catching up with post-colonial debates that stress the need for cultural restitution – a subject Mati Diop forcefully explored in her poetic documentary Dahomey (2024) – Elephants & Squirrels shows that the real work only begins after these initial conversations have taken place. Sri Lanka had actually demanded the return of some of the objects as early as the 1970s, but Switzerland never honoured those requests.

In the film, Piumakshi Veda Arachchige takes part in panel discussions and debates to make the same point again and again: talking is no longer enough. “In my view the debate around decolonisation and post-colonialism is characterised by too much diplomatic and academic talk,” she says. As a result, her emotional approach, which plays an integral role in her work as a visual artist, is too often cast aside.

The squirrels to which the film title alludes. soap factory films

This clash inspired Brändli to take on Elephants & Squirrels as his debut feature documentary. Curious about how and why all these artefacts are residing in the Swiss archives, he turned to Bernhard C. Schär, a Swiss historian and the author of a book about the Sarasin cousins, who urged him to contact Piumakshi Veda Arachchige.

Her frustrated efforts in Switzerland turned out to be exceptional material for a documentary. “While Deneth was initially welcomed to Basel as an artist, that warm reception waned once she began to ask more pressing questions,” he says. “At one point, I even had to conduct interviews in Switzerland by myself, as we hit a wall through which Deneth wasn’t allowed to pass.”

Back to the source

In turn, Brändli found himself lost in translation once the duo ventured to Sri Lanka, where it was Piumakshi Veda Arachchige who was able to open doors for him. Brändli recalls: “Vimal, an indigenous person and journalist, invited us to come to [the village of] Dambana. He said: ‘Don’t just talk about the past, but also about the struggles we face today.’ That was a turning point for me, where I felt a strong desire from others to also work on this story.”

Based in Basel, Gregor Brändli (1986) is not exactly a filmmaker, his work is based on cross-media projects (mainly film and theater). He is a also writer, and performer with Theater Kollektiv Glück and a co-founder of the design studio Tristesse. Leon Bricola

The jump to Sri Lanka widens the scope of Elephants & Squirrels, which, Piumakshi Veda Arachchige says, “goes way beyond restitution”.

“We also want to tell the contemporary story of the people in Sri Lanka — who they are, what they need, and what is happening to them,” she notes.

“One guiding philosophy was to have context and consensus,” Brändli says. This is mainly embodied by Uruwarige Wannila Aththo, the leader of the Indigenous Vedda community in Dambana, who welcomed the duo and expanded on the personal value of their stolen ancestors’ cultural artefacts.

And yet, even while filming in Sri Lanka, Piumakshi Veda Arachchige couldn’t fully believe that the adventure she was on with Brändli would result in an actual film. “It was just about documenting what was happening,” she reflects. “We were capturing how we did our research, not only in archives, but also in real life. We took trains, flights, tuk-tuks, and buses, constantly documenting what was happening around us in real time. When I watched the finished film for the first time, I saw all these layers, how our realities in the west contrasted with what we experienced in Sri Lanka.”

Back in Sri Lanka, examining images of the artifacts stored in Basel museums. soap factory

In that sense Elephants & Squirrels was born through a collaboration that, according to Brändli “emerged organically and was necessary throughout the entire story. As it was our joint ability to bridge both Sri Lanka and Basel that allowed for all these different doors to open up. That was crucial, since the question of restitution is deeply entangled in culturally specific patterns.”

They felt bolstered by the warm reception of their documentary at DOK Leipzig. “I saw how the story resonated with the audience,” Piumakshi Veda Arachchige says. “A Kenyan artist in the audience even said after the screening that he was inspired by the film and is now also in the process of making a film about restitution. If our film speaks to all these other similar situations in the world, I think we have done a good job.”

Edited by Catherine Hickley & Eduardo Simantob/sb