Skip to content
1981
Volume 14, Issue 1-2
  • ISSN: 2042-8022
  • E-ISSN: 2042-8030

Abstract

This project focuses poetry and the creative practice of making and performance to express a visual dialogue in which rhythm and repetition express an imagined, sensory experiential journey. ‘The vernacular of the diaspora’ is in the form of distinct creative cultural expressions which can shift how poetry is conveyed and experienced to an audience that is being increasingly exposed to new hybrid forms of different cultural traditions. It elaborates through an example. It reveals how members of a diaspora experience places they inhabit to return to the place of their ancestors through these different creative expressions. The visual images in this project show the artist as a member of the Tamil diaspora walking in slow rhythmical progression, traversing diverse terrains in different countries, the bare feet sensing the ground. The artist wears the flowing drape of the sari that holds traces of a community’s footprints that once gathered to give acknowledgement of loss in the many decades of war through making. The artist, in the role of a migrant, is thus taking the broader community with her on the journey. The lines of poetry in English and Tamil express the journey through senses, and the images are arranged to take on the visual form of the ritual drawing of a geometrical line drawing composed of straight lines, curves and loops, drawn around a grid pattern of dots – which is practised by Tamil women.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/btwo_00110_1
2025-02-27
2026-04-20

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Bennett, Jane (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Bishop, Claire (2004), ‘Antagonism and relational aesthetics’, October, 110, pp. 5179.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bolt, Barbara (2007), ‘Material thinking and the agency of matter, Studies in Material Thinking, 1:1, pp. 14.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Brickell, Katherine and Datta, Ayona (eds) (2011), Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections, Aldershot: Ashgate.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Butler, Judith (1988), ‘Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory’, Theatre Journal, 40:4, pp. 51931.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Cho, Lily (2007), ‘The turn to diaspora’, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 17, pp. 1130.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Christou, Anastasia (2011), ‘Narrating lives in (e)motion: Embodiment, belongingness and displacement in diasporic spaces of home and return’, Emotion, Space and Society, 4:4, pp. 24957.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Eliot, Thomas S. (2015), The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume 1: Collected and Uncollected Poems, London: Faber and Faber.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Haraway, Donna (1991), Simions, Cyborgs and Women, New York: Free Association Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Hegeman, Kira (2016), ‘Conversations in clay: Engaging community through a socially engaged public art project’, The Journal Art for Life, 8:2, pp. 116.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Jones, Amelia (2015), ‘Material traces: Performativity, artistic “work” and new concepts of agency’, TDR/The Drama Review, 59:4, pp. 1835.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Kanagasundaram, Varuni (2019), ‘Culture and the liminal space: Investigation of threshold ritual practice of migrants from South Asia and position of the feminine translated to creative practice in clay and performance’, 2019 ACUADS Conference: Engagement, Melbourne, Australia, 31 October–1 November, Melbourne: RMIT University, pp. 114, https://acuads.com.au/conference/conference-2019/. Accessed 21 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Laine, Anne (2012), ‘Intervention or inspiration? Kolam and fieldwork ethics in the Tamil diaspora’, Anthropology Today, 28, pp. 36.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Nagarajan, Vijaya (2007), ‘Threshold designs, forehead dots, and menstruation rituals: Exploring time and space in Tamil Kolams’, in T. Pintchman (ed.), Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 85105.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/btwo_00110_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/btwo_00110_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): clay; cultural practices; diaspora; migration; re-imagining; ritual; Tamil; vernacular
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test