Cora de Lang’s new exhibition Pandora’s Box was curiously described in the press invitation as ‘artistically highlighting the development of wrapping items in today’s world’. Upon arrival I expected a tour around the Red Dot Gallery – the chosen venue – informing me of the history of the brown paper bag, or the marvellous developments which have occurred in birthday wrapping over the centuries, of course all put together by the talents of the world renowned artist herself. Thankfully however, this exhibition covers a lot more ground than merely the developments made in household wrapping items.

The connection to the wrapping items stem from the fact that many of de Lang’s work in this exhibition are painted onto shopping bags, airsickness and sanitary bags she has collected. Rather than being a vitriolic stand against global warming or a hum drum stance advocating the need to recycle, de Lang’s work plays on a type of psychedelic spirituality. Kaleidoscopic miniature South Asian motifs, intermingled with images from across all five continents, are painstakingly crafted onto objects such as sanitary bags which, to the artist, have a particular cosmic energy. By adorning everyday objects with such energetic and mesmerising images the artist lifts objects, which are normally ignored and thrown away, into our conscious reality.

The airsickness bags ‘have all travelled with me, they were in the air with me’, the artist states, ‘it would mean a different thing if I went and bought them in bulk from a store’. The brands of LTU, Cathay Pacific and Air Berlin have even been incorporated into the art work so as to maintain their connection to their original use, also still visible are the directions: "If used for air sickness please hand over to cabin crew". Her attachment and elaborate adornment of these objects is juxtaposed to their regular mundane use, highlighting the disposability of a vast majority of the stuff which fills our day to day lives. These objects which we usually dispose of so easily without conscious reflection filter into the unconscious realm of inattention. In many ways this exhibition could be interpreted as a rebellion against the growing disposability of the stuff that surrounds us, for what we throw away is just as defining as the things that we keep and treasure. All objects no matter how mundane have existed on a trajectory with their own history.

To engage with the subtle, codified pictorial patterns and motifs in de Lang’s work is to be entranced by vibrant colours and images which elude contextualisation and delve into the universal subconscious. Born in South America, the artist has been fortunate and affluent enough to have lived and worked in a variety of different countries in Africa, Asia and Europe for most of her life. It is the influences from her different homes which greatly inform her work.

de Lang is a cultural hybridist, crossing religious and national boundaries sampling the unique, mundane, erotic and magnificent from a range of communities across the globe and fusing them into single aesthetic collaborations. Lalith Manage one of the Managers of The Red Dot Gallery and artist himself asks, ‘Where do you place Cora de Lang? ... Indians won’t put her in their art books ... she does not fit in Sri Lankan art books’.

Her work raises questions about cultural authenticity and what it ‘truly’ means to be of one place. It is interesting to think about questions of cultural identity in light of the civil war in Sri Lanka. Although complex, the war has been spurred by ideas of an ethnicised and nationalised identity, where definitions of identity emerge through a form of cultural nostalgia solidified through an idea of a true place, with original peoples. de Lang’s work opens up space in which to question the stability of ethnic and cultural identity, she even notes that she has been told that ‘she connects continents and people in a very subtle way’ through her art. Perhaps instead of connecting actual people, she connects the idea of different peoples, and in doing so raises interesting questions about the political and social implications for ethnic and national identity in light of intensifying cultural hybridity and cultural borrowing.