Exhibit: Unpacking the complexities and liminality of the Tamil Community
Imag(in)ing 'Home' at The Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver):
| This installation tries to unpack the complexities and liminality of the Tamil Community by weaving together 300 individual stories about the idea of "home." |
Shanaathanan Thamotharampillai, a Tamil artist from Sri Lanka who is currently completing his PhD in art history at Jawaharlal Nerhu University, New Delhi.
Imag(in)ing 'Home'
When asked by the curator of Museum of Anthropology, how he would describe "Imaging home" in terms of a question it asks, Shanaathanan answered, "How do the emotional and material boundaries of a Diasporic home exist? And how do they interact and transform each other?"
This installation tries to unpack the complexities and liminality of the Tamil Community by weaving together 300 individual stories about the idea of "home."
Each personal story or memory is represented by a mundane or everyday object. The resulting installation is a collage of diverse and contested identities, of memories and histories of a lost homeland, and of different mechanisms of home making.
The exhibition opened at the Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver) on January 23, 2010, and runs for about 8 months.