My land-based practice is centred on three materials: salt, ash and clay.

Each material represents a stage in my research towards uncovering more about my Tamil heritage. In my dissertation, I drink the salt water to get sick, I am exploring the profound link between the resistance of the Tamil Tigresses, the female branch of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and their poetry. Throughout the war, they used words to document their experiences, feelings and language. The documentation of the Tamil language is resistance against an oppressive Sinhala State, which was aiming to eradicate the Tamil people. By building my land-based practice in response to their poetry and expanding my understanding of academics and artists in the Tamil diaspora, I will begin to add to a legacy of documented Tamil histories and futures.

When considering the significance of salt in opposition to the eradication of the Tamil nation, it is and will always be intrinsically tied to longing. As a child, I would stand with my feet in the sand and saltwater of the Indian Ocean in Chennai, wondering what was out there. Longing for something I didn’t know how to long for. I didn’t hold the language to articulate this longing in English and Tamil did not hold the language to allow me to articulate it. It is not until I drink the salt water, that I will begin to reckon with this longing.

It is not enough to feel the salt on my feet or smell the salty air. I must immerse myself in the substance of salt. In my poem, I drink the salt water, I explore the substance of salt through the visceral longing and painful desire I have to be with my sisters in Tamil Eelam. I want to feel what they feel and taste what they taste. As Captain Vaanathi, a Tamil Tigress, says in her poem Get ready for battle, “Look! There, in a flood of blood, your sister holding her gun out to you. Take her weapon. Walk in her footsteps.” I am beginning to learn that solidarity with these warriors is becoming a warrior myself. Or maybe I am already a warrior, I just need to lean in.

I drink the salt water

I drink the salt water to get sick.

I drink the salt water to throw up.

I drink the salt water to flood my lungs.

I drink the salt water to taste the water you are drinking over there.

I drink the salt water to feel the ocean you bleed into.

I drink the salt water to remember you.

I drink the salt water as a ritual.

I drink the salt water as a protest.

I drink the salt water to start a war.

I drink the salt water to end a war.

I drink the salt water to know your sisterhood.

I drink the salt water so you can resuscitate me.

I drink the salt water and swim across the Palk Strait.

I drink the salt water to arrive in Eelam.

I drink the salt water to be with you.

1 : land-based sculpture

The Execution of a Tiger Woman //

This piece will explore four scores: salt, ash, clay and water. Each score is paired with text, material and audio which unpacks a theme of resistance to execution.

This piece draws on artistic practices that are embedded in resistance. It draws from my material-based practice which is rooted in resistance against displacement and opposing severance from the Tamil language and culture. The Tamil Tigresses resisted violence through poetry. The Tigresses were poets in a world where they were deemed terrorists, non-human, and broken, where no one wanted them to exist, let alone write. I am summoning these resistance fighters, I am asking them to step out before you through my tongue and skin and share all of their power and wisdom and suffering through a form I can do. How I long to walk in their footsteps of sisterhood; so I make and write and perform and document all I can.

I resist by existing. I resist because my art is being documented. I am a resistance fighter when I resist eradication. My ancestors resisted by dying for a free Tamil homeland. People in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Kashmir and the list goes on, resist and resist genocides by existing. These movements are all interconnected, rooted in kindness and joy and liberation and love. These genocides are rooted in fascism, deeply systemic racism and colonialism and hate that stretch to the farthest parts of the earth, infecting so many beautiful communities.

I am an artist who lives in London. I have the privilege of living in London, in the belly of the beast. I have the privilege of knowing what the beast looks like and how it moves. Of the ways it shows its teeth and where to strike when it's asleep. Of having the time to make art when we are running out of time. I make art when the world feels like it's falling apart and I can't get out of bed. I make art to live. And I resist so I can make art.

Trailer // The Execution of a Tiger Woman