Locating art practice in the British Tamil Diaspora

Abstract

This article locates the position of art practice within the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in the UK. It focuses on three artists who use their art making to investigate experiences of migration and multiple belonging, and shows how absence of institutional support have constituted a marginalisation of their work. The artists’ preference for visual art is at odds with the Tamil nationalist construction of an identity rooted in ancient poetry and drama, and Sinhala-focused support for artists in Sri Lanka has formed an invisibility of Tamils that extends to the British art scene. This situation is illuminated through a perspective that connects nationalist ideology with aesthetics of everyday life, and the analysis is expanded by gender and queer critiques of nationalism, which provide overlapping perceptions across South Asia and the diaspora. The article is based on 18 months’ ethnographic fieldwork in London, Belfast and Jaffna; it demonstrates how the artists negotiate between lack of institutional support and individual aims to reconfigure the present location of their practices.