Kolam (கோலம்)
Image credit: Palani Kumar/People’s Archive of Rural India
EXHIBITION: 9 November 2024-15 February 2025
OPENING TIMES: Thursday - Saturday, 10AM-6PM, or by appointment.
WHERE: Gallery 1
Kolam is an exhibition, an action, a space, an exploration. Mimicking its namesake*, it acts as an invitation to Tamil women and other marginalised communities to hold space and have voice within contemporary cultural production. Cross the threshold, Cross that line, defy the mythological man. Erase the kolam.
This liminal space explores the plurality of Tamil identity, the contradictions, the poetics, and the politics. It negotiates what we bring forward through the threshold, what we leave behind. It seeks the right to self-determine.
How do I define my postcolonial Tamil identity? She takes multiple forms. They take multiple shapes.
We are inviting artist Osheen Siva, artists Hairunisha, Palani Kumar from Palani Studio, artist Rocky Mol Selvaraj to define, redefine, subvert what their Tamil identity is or isn’t. The exhibition sees itself as a Kolam notebook/scrapbook, not claiming to be a resolution, but to hold space for collective reflection. It tries to reflect the ambiguity of postcolonial Tamil women’s identity, Dalit identity and diasporic identity, trying to reassure the nonsensicality and to be comfortable in it. It jumps from one to another, not fully making sense, reflecting the representation of Tamil lives in the global gaze. It critiques the momentary visibility of these issues and misrepresentation.
The exhibition is an intentionally inept documentation. It claims success in accepting the failure to capture the entirety of what it means to be a Tamil. The exhibition preview will also hold art works from Nottingham’s Tamil community, collected through an open call, supported by Nottingham Tamil Kuzhumam. It tries to think through what goes in and what doesn’t in a gallery.
The exhibition is a part of practice-led curatorial research by Raghavi Chinnadurai, supported by Primary’s Programme team. The research focuses on exploring the pedagogical possibilities of embedded cultural practices in the Tamil community, as decolonial curatorial framework. It also tries to formulate non-Eurocentric exhibitory methodologies, rooted on collaboration and co-creation, which could facilitate Tamil contemporary art, especially from women and young artists.
* Kolam, the intricate rhythmic geometric patterns, is a South-Indian threshold, domestic art form drawn in front of houses every day using rice flour. It has been demonstrated to have mathematical, cosmological, musical and spiritual meanings beyond cultural and ritualistic history. It carries intergenerational, embodied cultural knowledge. Though emancipatory in some respects, Kolam has also been a tool of subjugation. The project aims to work through these.
Artists Bios:
Hairunisha:
Hairunisha is a photographer and Young Artist from North Chennai and is currently pursuing a degree in Digital Journalism at Loyola College, Chennai. Raised by her single mother, she began volunteering with the Chennai Climate Action Group in 10th grade, where she advocated for environmental issues in North Chennai. In 2022, she attended a photography workshop by Palani Kumar, which ignited her passion for photography. She documented marginalised communities and their environmental challenges, later showcasing her work in the exhibition "Reframed-North Chennai." This experience solidified her interest in photography as a career.
Over the past two years, she has held four exhibitions and is currently working at Palani Studio, as well as serving as a student photographer for Vikatan magazine. She has received the Good City grant and have worked as a mentor in government model schools. Her goal is to use photography to drive social change and give voice to the marginalised.
Osheen Siva:
Osheen Siva is a multidisciplinary artist from Thiruvannamalai, currently based in Goa, India. Through the lens of surrealism, speculative fiction and science fiction and rooted in their Dalit and Tamil heritage, Siva imagines new worlds of decolonized dreamscapes, futuristic oasis with mutants and monsters and narratives of queer and feminine power. They work in a variety of mediums including immersive media, instillation, performance art, public art and digital illustration. They have exhibited at Bonington Gallery (solo) in Nottingham, UK, The Arts House in Australia, created the stage design for the first ever South Asian dedicated space at Glastonbury among others.
Past clients have included - National Geography, The New York Times, Glastonbury, Adult Swim, Meta, Apple, Gucci, Adi Magazine, Absolut, Dr. Martens, Decolonize Fest among others. They were also an Illustration Jury member for the One Club for Creativity—ADC's 100th Annual Awards in 2021.
Palani Kumar:
Hailing from the village of Jawaharlalpuram in Madurai district, Palani Kumar decided to pursue engineering as per the wish of his mother, a fish seller. He graduated with B.E., in the sports category. In 2013, while he was still pursuing engineering, he applied for a loan and purchased his first camera. He worked as a cinematographer for the critically acclaimed documentary [Kakoos]—a searing narrative on the lives of manual scavengers in Tamil Nadu. In a couple of years, Kumar put together his first photography exhibition—Naanum oru Kullanthai (I am a child too) in Chennai, featuring photographs of the children of manual scavengers. Since 2019, as a fellow of PARI (People’s Archive of Rural India), Kumar is currently documenting the lives of working-class women across India. Kumar is also associated with Pep Collective - a Forum of socially responsible photographers in Tamil Nadu.
He was recognised as one of the ‘Top Ten Humans 2019’ by Anandha Vikatan- a widely recognised Tamil Magazine, for his attempt to sensitise and visibilize the work of manual scavengers to an otherwise desensitised world. Other accolades include, the ‘Best Story of the Year - 2020’ award from the Public Relations Council of India, Zee Tamil’s ‘Tamizha Tamizha Award’, ‘Imagining the Nation State’ grant from Chennai photo biennale, 2021 Amplify grant, The Samyak Drishti and Photo South Asia Grant. In 2022, he received the first Dayanita Singh-PARI Documentary Photography Award. Kumar hopes to continue using his art form to bring to light the lives, celebrations, and struggles of marginalised communities which are often neglected.
Rocky Mol Selvaraj:
Rocky Mol Selvaraj is a South-Indian visual artist based in Nottingham and a recent MA Fine Arts graduate from the University of Lincoln. Her practice is based on looking at the world through the lens of skin as a metaphor for identity. With the geometrical patterns on the skin as a scalar unit, she compares and accomplishes interconnectedness and oneness in random everyday objects.
“No matter how alienated we may have become, we produce patterns that mirror the natural world.” - (Victoria Vesna, 2002)
Observing the wrinkled, skin-like texture of aged apples, Rocky weaves the fruit into her biographical storytelling, using it as a metaphor for the complexities of identity, the passage of time, and the quiet strength found in vulnerability. In Rocky’s works, the apple continues to be a symbol of social exclusion due to Caste, hope for love and equality through painting and photography. The apple represents both nourishment and division—a fruit that is accessible to some yet withheld from others.
Raghavi’s role as an Associate Curator is funded by Art Fund.
Osheen Siva’s collaboration in Kolam, happened through their exhibition at Bonington Gallery in Spring 2024. There’s also a SCREENING & DISCUSSION with artist SUBASH THEBE LIMBU, at Bonington exploring similar themes.
Access:
Kolam is located in our ground-floor gallery space, which has full-level access from our new main entrance on Seely Road.
Some of the photographs are above eye level. Digital versions of these works are made accessible and available. The full text is available digitally through a QR code in the gallery space. Please ask if you need a digital device to access these. There are easy-to-read and large-font versions of the text available. Tamil translation, and audio descriptions will be available during the January reopening.
If you would like to make a group booking or visit our exhibitions at a quiet time, please contact us onadmin@weareprimary.org or 0115 924 4493 to arrange.
For details about the exhibition, please email raghavi@weareprimary.org and check our website for updates.