Imag(in)ing 'Home', Memories and Histories of a lost homeland, display at Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver

With the help of Vancouver Tamil community at large and Canadian Tamil Congress, Vancouver chapter, Shanaathanan Thamotharampillai, a Tamil artist from Sri Lanka who is currently completing his PhD in art history at Jawaharlal Nerhu University, New Delhi  started a project in September of 2009. 

The Project was designed to unpack the complexities and liminality of the Tamil Community by weaving together 300 individual stories about the idea of "home." Each personal story or memory is represented by a mundane or everyday object. The resulting installation is a collage of diverse and contested identities, of memories and histories of a lost homeland, and of different mechanisms of home making.

Display at Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver‚ under the title Imag(in)ing 'Home.

The finished project is now on display at Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver‚ under the title Imag(in)ing 'Home.

This installation tries to unpack the complexities and liminality of the Tamil Community by weaving together 300 individual stories about the idea of "home." Each personal story or memory is represented by a mundane or everyday object. The resulting installation is a collage of diverse and contested identities, of memories and histories of a lost homeland, and of different mechanisms of home making.

Display at Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver‚ under the title Imag(in)ing 'Home.

Yet, the process of collection the objects became a kind of network linking isolated Tamil individuals and families, living in different corners of Vancouver, as a community. The exhibition opened at the Museum of‚ Anthropology (Vancouver)‚ on January 23, 2010, and runs for about 8 months. It is sure to evoke interest by many worldwide during the Vancouver winter Olympics 2010.

See below link for a preview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf8t0Oy4wOw

When asked by the curator of Museum‚ of Anthropology, how he would describe Imaging home in terms of a question it asks, Shanaathanan answered, "hHow do the emotional and material boundaries of a Diasporic‚ home exist? And how do they interact and transform each other?"

Display at Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver‚ under the title Imag(in)ing 'Home.