Akurugraphy Exhibition Opens at Geoffrey Bawa Space in Colombo
The desire to communicate and be understood is at the heart of what it is to be human. In contemporary life, digital infrastructure underpins how we work, live, and share information, but the letterforms that carry our languages are rarely neutral.
Arkurugraphy, a new exhibition at the Geoffrey Bawa Space, explores the history, culture, and future of letterforms across Sri Lanka’s three official languages. Presenting the decade-long practice of Colombo-based type foundry Mooniak, it examines how decisions about the digitisation of Sinhala, Tamil, and Latin scripts impact legibility and carry deep consequences for who is seen, who is heard, and whose language endures.
Writing systems carry human thought and knowledge across time and space. Letterforms can become a form of cultural artefact, unique graphic symbols representing identity and belonging. Today, these inherited letterforms often take shape as digital fonts, their design demanding fluency across history, aesthetics, linguistics, and technical standards. Akurugraphy asks audiences to look at letterforms beyond the act of reading: to appreciate their form, trace their past, and consider the decisions that impact their future.
Akurugraphy brings together typographic specimens, archival material, and software development spanning Mooniak’s full body of practice. It is a celebration of letterforms as art and an examination of the technical and political stakes of designing scripts for the digital age. As part of the exhibition, the Geoffrey Bawa Space will host a programme of monthly talks, curatorial tours, workshops, and children’s programmes.
Akurugraphy is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., and will be on view until 8 November 2026. The exhibition is designed to be accessible and welcoming to all visitors. The Geoffrey Bawa Space offers step-free access and wheelchair accessible facilities. Tactile elements are available throughout the exhibition. More information is available at geoffreybawa.com/akurugraphy.
About Mooniak
Mooniak is a Colombo-based graphic design firm and type foundry working at the intersection of culture, typography, design, and identity. Merging a global view with local roots, Mooniak specialises in producing multi-script fonts and typography for Lankan audiences in Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. With a small team of full-time employees and collaborators from around the world, the team takes pride in building a thriving community of letterform lovers and advancing the Lankan visual identity. The majority of Mooniak’s work is published under Libre/Open source licenses.
About the Geoffrey Bawa Trust
The Geoffrey Bawa Trust is a non-profit organisation established by the architect in 1982 to foster architecture, fine arts, and environmental studies in Sri Lanka and abroad. Since Geoffrey Bawa’s passing in 2003, the Trust has maintained the architect’s archives and sustained year-round public programmes, such as lectures, tours, and exhibitions, that engage broad discourse on natural and built environments and the arts.
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