Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the kolam practice, a central phenomenon of popular visual culture among Tamils in India and Sri Lanka, mediates identity and belonging within the Tamil diaspora in the UK. It discusses aesthetic effects in the homelands and their transformations in diasporic existence.

Paper long abstract:

The kolam practice is a central phenomenon of popular visual culture among Tamils in India and Sri Lanka. According to certain regularities, women draw symmetrical images in front of entrances of homes to create auspiciousness in the family as well as in the surrounding community. The size, elaboration or absence of the images varies due to life-rituals and public events, which influences feelings in the immediate environment. The ideal material and social organisation of this artistic practice is in flux, and have added economic aspects to its meaning and aesthetic effects.

This paper gives a tentative account of an ongoing study of how kolam mediates identity and belonging within the Tamil diaspora in the UK. It shows that there is concern that disapproving responses from the British majority might transform the kolam into a practice that evokes problems and thereby compromise its current meaning. Uncertainties have caused people to refrain from drawing the images, while others creatively adjust their performances. It is suggested that the lack of visibility of kolam in the Tamil diaspora relates to experiences of lack of membership in the British society. In its absence, kolam mediates longings of home.

The study is positioned between art and anthropology, and it investigates aesthetics as a social phenomenon, situated in local moralities and negotiated in everyday life. The effects of kolam will be discussed in relation to Hindu notions of vision as a sensorial encounter where negative glances can be contaminating and harmful and positive glances can enhance auspiciousness.