#wavesofcolor

Artwork by Keera @ Waves of Color 

KEERA Toronto, Canada I can’t imagine a day without my sisters. I shared a room with them for twenty-five years until I got married. When my sisters and I hug each other, amma has flashbacks of her childhood. She has lived away from her 11 siblings for 15years.

While I was pregnant I did a chalk drawing of a lady holding a baby. That baby looks just like me when I was small, my cousin and my periamma (mother’s elder sister) from back home. When I look at my son, Yaalventhan, I see them and my ammamma (grandma). I only had a chance to spend three days with ammamma in her village before she passed away and now all I have are memories and the footage I shot of her.  I miss all of them so much. Sometimes when I wear their jewelry I feel like I look like them.

When I went back home in 2012 I saw a community suffering from deep psychological pain. The last time amma’s thambi (younger brother) saw his wife was in 2009 in one of the Sri Lankan army’s concentration camps. She needed medical attention and was taken away from him. We think it’s likely she was killed. He is now mentally unwell.  He won’t accept she is dead so he continues to look for her. He works, does everything on his own, but at night he cries. He still recites the number plate of the ambulance that took her. My family has suffered so much. My two cousins Nathi and Yalini were killed in the 2009 genocide. In 2015 when I was getting married,  Nathi’s amma gave me the attiyal (gold necklace with stones worn on special occasions) she had kept for her daughter’s wedding.  Yalini’s amma gave me her daughter’s earrings. The jewelry which I now own, holds my family’s pain. And this is hard for me.

I see these experiences, this trauma, the faces of the people I love so much in my art – which is a story about our culture, language, history, country and our fight for Tamil Eelam.

I started to understand that art within a western curriculum had political and societal restrictions when I was at school. While drawing for a community centre I was told not to create art that had too much blood and violence. This silencing bothered me.  So I opened my own studio - Waves of Color. I run my own syllabus, my students can exhibit what they want and I can teach them about our struggle. But I can’t do this on my own. I need Tamil parents to talk to their children about it.  My art studio can’t be the first time children hear about Maaverar Naal or Black July.  This idea of identity, should be a whole-community initiative.  As artists we have a critical role to play, but it’s part of the bigger Tamil Eelam dream.