Divya Sharma

My current research is based on the Tamil diaspora and how language creates a sense of shared community among the intra continental Tamil speaking peoples in the world.  The critical edge of the work is to question boundaries, the borderlands, exile, otherness, strangeness and foreignness as migrant communities deal with life and my attempt is to speak to all these notions through the idea of using the Tamil script that also happens to be my own Mother Tongue.  

   For the Prick and Stitch residency, I have taken an image of an epigraph or rock carving of the early Tamil script that is carbon dated to be 2000 years old and digitally printed it on muslin cloth. I have then used needle punch embroidery to mimic the process of carving to trace the letters of the language and thus find a (re)connection with my ancestors and heritage that is so familiar yet so elusive. The words ‘You will always be with me’ is needle punched (carved) into the cloth (rock) reminiscent of graffiti.