Performing the Material Poetics of Migration: a (re)Imagined threshold ritual of Tamil women

This creative practice-led research investigates how a culturally inscribed traditional ritual of Kolam performed at the threshold by women from the Tamil diaspora is (re)imagined into a contemporary practice in clay. Such research invites the viewer to enter a place of encounter. Ritual practices are enactments of cultural and gender identity by diaspora. This generates relational connections relevant to lived experience of migrants through material and social dialogical processes of continuity and change. The experiential, sensory encounter of materiality and performative action on ceramic artefacts and clay are realised in (re)imagined artworks at threshold sites. They activate processes of change that prompt an exploration of the states of transformation accompanying threshold crossings of boundaries experienced by migrants. The ephemeral, traditional Kolam drawing is created at the threshold of homes and in public spaces using rice flour to communicate a message of wellbeing and of what is happening. The drawing merges with the ground as interaction through movement of people, surrounding matter, and weather, transforms the creation. The (re)imagined practice at intersections is analysed through theoretical perspectives of South Asian cultural practices, and within broader contemporary fine art practices that includes New Materialism and Performance. This framework informs how agencies of materiality and traces, gender performativity through ritual, and community participation, are exercised within the practice. In the project, Performing the Material Poetics of Migration: a (re)Imagined threshold ritual of Tamil women, qualitative research was conducted by engaging practitioners of the traditional Kolam within the diaspora in Australia and Singapore through interviews and on-site observations. The aim was to provide deeper understanding of the interrelations that exist between material and gestural, social, spatial, and devotional aspects of practice. The intrinsic characteristics of Kolam and agency of the feminine in performative gesture, informed the development of (re)imagined creative encounters of material artefacts in clay and ceramic, often incorporating textile to form a hybrid material through an innovative approach. Installations in gallery exhibitions capture the embodiment of women from the Tamil diaspora through Sari drape and gestural acts of ritual in hybrid material in ceramic and textile forms. Artworks were also undertaken as durational socially engaged making of clay artefacts and participatory actions generating traces. The research examines how material agency of clay and ceramic can enable new ways to experience liminality, flux, impermanence, and re-assemblage. The creative research outcomes understand these as iterations of boundary-making and boundary-dismantling, which can be further contextualised through the ongoing material and social transformation emerging within the migrant journey. The threshold constructed as material encounter in clay generates new insight on how practices of culture can be (re)imagined to incorporate migrant lived experience.