Theme: “Prisons and Society in Sri Lanka”.
Accepted mediums: Poems, Short Stories, Zines, Comics, Photo-Essays, Drawings, Paintings, Memes, Conceptual Photos, Collages, Collaborative Art, and Adaptations of Art.
Prizes: 1st Place – LKR 7,000 l 2nd Place – LKR 3,000 l 3rd Place – LKR 3,000
Selected works will be showcased on the Artivism Corner.
Deadline: 23 September 2026 Send to: contact@muragala.lk
Sri Lanka’s prison system tends to enter public discussion and consciousness only when something goes seriously wrong, usually a riot, a death, or another major incident. The recent unrest at Negombo Prison in July 2026, where nearly 30 people died, and Mahara Prison in August 2026, where one casualty was reported, has once again drawn public attention to the deeper and long-standing problems facing the country’s prison system.
One of the most serious issues is overcrowding. Many prisons in Sri Lanka hold more than three times the number of people they were designed to accommodate. Yet overcrowding is only one part of a much larger and more complex crisis. Critical reporting around the recent incidents have also raised concerns about the influence of organised criminal gangs, some of which are believed to operate with strong political connections, and the continued presence of drug trafficking networks within prisons. Other concerns include the lack of proper separation between different categories of inmates, ill-treatment and abuse of detainees, poor mechanisms for addressing prisoners’ grievances, and inadequate supervision and accountability.
The official state response to the recent incidents has moved between several explanations. Authorities have pointed to overcrowding, while also investigating whether there may have been a more organised effort by external actors behind the unrest. Government MPs have also suggested that tensions may be linked to its official anti-drug drive to address the drug issue in prisons and society. In outbreaks in the Borella New Magazine Prison, inmates who were eyewitnesses have spoken about organised efforts involving enforcement officers to provoke prisoners and to eliminate witnesses of critical underworld and drug connected cases.
Public and social media discussions have also raised concerns about how coverage of prison riots often privileges the perspectives of prison officers and state authorities over those of prisoners. They have drawn attention to allegations of torture, inhuman treatment and other human rights violations within prisons, which are issues that are often sidelined in official discourse when riots occur, and the language of control, security and restoring order comes to dominate.
These discussions also raise important questions about state accountability. What responsibility does the state bear for the conditions in which prisoners are held, and for protecting their rights and safety? When allegations of torture, abuse or excessive use of force emerge, how are they investigated, and who is held accountable? To what extent can the state focus on restoring order without addressing the underlying conditions, grievances and institutional failures that contribute to unrest in the first place?
For its 5th issue, Muragala Artivism Corner invites artistic submissions that explore how society sees prisons and prison riots or violence in prisons, and how we understand the relationship between prisons, the state and society. What do prisons represent in our collective imagination? Who ends up in prison, and why? What happens behind prison walls that remains unseen by the public? How do ideas of punishment, justice, rehabilitation, violence and human dignity shape our understanding of incarceration? We invite artists, illustrators, photographers, writers and other creative practitioners to engage with these questions.
