Do Not Disturb The Art (Especially At Cinnamon Life Colombo)

IT’S EASY TO BE SWEPT UP IN THE PHYSICAL GRANDEUR OF CINNAMON Life, Colombo. The hotel building rises out of the city like an architectural exhale in a city still catching its breath from decades of war, rebirth and reinvention. In no time, you find yourself nursing a coconut-based drink. Soon after, you’re being guided into a suite that feels more like a sanctuary. Around you, travertine marble, curved furniture, and ocean views that look photoshopped by nature itself.

I was there, wrapped in a robe I didn’t want to take off, standing by the floor-to-ceiling window of my Ocean Suite, watching the city unfurl beneath a sky the colour of warm milk tea. The room was still—unhurried, quiet, elemental. Colombo glittered faintly outside.

An artwork by Pala Pothupitiye Pala Pothupitiye

The food, as expected, was exceptional—twelve restaurants, each a different passport stamp for your palate. The Kurundu spa, meanwhile, was a temple of breath and stillness. But, for me, what lingered the longest was the art.

I’ve stayed at many luxury hotels. I’ve seen statement pieces on marble walls, perfectly-lit installations in lobbies that people pass without looking up. But here, there was provocation and tension. There was also a deep, unrelenting tenderness of a country trying to speak through canvas and copper and pigment. Conceptualised by British-Sri Lankan architect Cecil Balmond, the hotel’s structure leans into raw textures and minimalist restraint to let the art speak.

There are over a thousand museum-grade artworks across the hotel, though I didn’t know that when I first walked in. What I knew was this: something in the building’s rhythm felt different. It wasn’t just the design that beckoned, it was like the hotel was trying to have a dialogue—nudging you to slow down in the hallways, placing question marks on your way to breakfast.

Joining the Narrative

Art in hotels isn’t new, but more hotels are steadily evolving from places of transience into destinations of culture. You see it in the way Aman commissions site-specific sculptures, or how The Fife Arms in Scotland houses works by Picasso and Freud.

At Hotel Zena in Washington DC, a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg composed of 20,000 hand-painted tampons dominates the lobby. At 21c Museum Hotels across the American South and Midwest, contemporary art is so central to the experience that the hotels themselves are museums. For many of the world’s most dazzling hotels, art is now becoming a distinct point of their identity.

Gayan Prageeth’s installation Before Nineteen Eighty Three in a lobby

Cinnamon Life enters that lineage with a distinct South Asian perspective—one that fuses legacy with a postmodern lens. Curated by art curator Sanduni de Fonseka, the sheer scale of the project is staggering. “The art here doesn’t just decorate the space, it shapes the experience. It sparks curiosity, invites conversation and gives the building its own unique rhythm,” says Radiesha Daluwatte, director of marketing at Cinnamon Life.

The collection of more than one thousand pieces, that cost a million dollars, spans contemporary, conceptual and politically charged works, and reads like a who’s who of Sri Lankan art: Anoli Perera, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, Jagath Weerasinghe, Pala Pothupitiye, Chathurika Jayani, Firi Rahman, Abdul Halik Azeez and many more.

“Each art piece has a deep narrative and is mostly related to the history, culture, and landscapes of Sri Lanka,” says Daluwatte, adding, “We prioritise thought-provoking pieces that command attention even in passing.”

In line with Radiesha’s statement, a comically large upturned bucket, balanced mid-air like it belonged to another dimension, sits in one of the lobbies. I walked past it twice. The third time, I bent and looked inside—and that’s when it hit me. Painted with pastoral perfection on the outside, the bucket reveals its trauma only if you dare to peek inside. A bloodied metaphor for Black July—Sri Lanka’s 1983 pogrom against its Tamil population.

During the riots, Tamils were identified and segregated based on how they pronounced From left: Gayan Prageeth’s installation Before Nineteen Eighty Three in a lobby; a suite for the views at Cinnamon Life, Colombo “bucket.” Tamils would say “valdiya,” while the Sinhalese said “baldiya”. Titled Before Nineteen Eighty Three, the installation, by Gayan Prageeth, became a reminder of the role of an object as mundane as a bucket, as a tool of ethnic profiling.

Another work that stood out was Firi Rahman’s Kampong. A cartographic fever dream, it’s a mythologised map of Slave Island, Colombo’s melting pot of cultures and communities. You might also find yourself lost in Jagath Weerasinghe’s Unfinished Landscape. A meditation on the Vanni District during the final days of the civil war, it’s quiet—a pale blue sky, still waters—but underneath lies the agony of those final days. You’ll find Weerasinghe’s work sobering, even if you didn’t live through the conflict.

A suite for the views at Cinnamon Life, Colombo

Similarly, there are many other pieces— adorned in the hallways and plastered on key cards—that’ll leave you stunned. Be it the sprawling canvas of Chathurika Jayani’s Dreamscapes, or Ecce Homo by Chandraguptha Thenuwara, every curated piece in the hotel is symbolic. “One of my favourites is Sit, Transit by Muvindu Binoy, created especially for the lobby entrance. It’s more than a visual statement—it’s a moment of pause in a place defined by movement. The piece explores themes of waiting, transition and human connection,” says Daluwatte.

It’s not every day that a hotel can make you pause mid-breakfast and reflect on civil war, cartography and the ethics of urban modernity. In most luxury hotels, I’ve forgotten the walls. At Cinnamon Life, they lingered beyond the rooms.

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