here is a kolam outside of a house in tamil nadu. courtesy of wikimedia.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Project Description
“Truth is a pathless land.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
In the hours before dawn, millions of women and girls in Tamil Nadu sweep the threshold of their homes, purify the ground outside, and, with a fistful of white rice powder, proceed to draw a kolam. Kolams are intricate designs combining form, motion, and symmetry in an ancient Dravidian drawing tradition. Over the course of the day, this prayer for prosperity is rained on, walked over, blown by the wind and otherwise obliterated. Each morning a new one is drawn. Through this process of creation and decay, kolams announce the coming of festivals, births, deaths, aspirations, and changes within the home. Designs are based on a system of dots and lines forming one, highly aesthetic, interwoven whole. The dots signify challenges we may encounter. Serpentine lines represent the journey, the Yatra, one takes through life. Each pattern carries a very specific message. Kolams are map, prayer, journey, and ritual. They combine a fixed-grid matrix with labyrinth-like motion, yielding questions of permanence, impermanence, mobility and place.
This project is dedicated to exploring traditions of place-making as daily ritual and devotional practice in the South Indian landscape. Over the course of five months, I will study the kolam drawing tradition, create and exhibit a series of artworks in India, and collect source material for installation works to be exhibited in the United States upon return. Inspiration will be drawn from kolam designs for puja rooms, pilgrimage sites, ashrams, temples, and for the home. The goal is not to pictorialize, exoticize, or aestheticize, but to convey the importance of place-making at thresholds throughout South India and examine similarities/differences with American culture. With heightened sensitivity towards our surroundings, we all may derive a deeper sense of place.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
In the hours before dawn, millions of women and girls in Tamil Nadu sweep the threshold of their homes, purify the ground outside, and, with a fistful of white rice powder, proceed to draw a kolam. Kolams are intricate designs combining form, motion, and symmetry in an ancient Dravidian drawing tradition. Over the course of the day, this prayer for prosperity is rained on, walked over, blown by the wind and otherwise obliterated. Each morning a new one is drawn. Through this process of creation and decay, kolams announce the coming of festivals, births, deaths, aspirations, and changes within the home. Designs are based on a system of dots and lines forming one, highly aesthetic, interwoven whole. The dots signify challenges we may encounter. Serpentine lines represent the journey, the Yatra, one takes through life. Each pattern carries a very specific message. Kolams are map, prayer, journey, and ritual. They combine a fixed-grid matrix with labyrinth-like motion, yielding questions of permanence, impermanence, mobility and place.
This project is dedicated to exploring traditions of place-making as daily ritual and devotional practice in the South Indian landscape. Over the course of five months, I will study the kolam drawing tradition, create and exhibit a series of artworks in India, and collect source material for installation works to be exhibited in the United States upon return. Inspiration will be drawn from kolam designs for puja rooms, pilgrimage sites, ashrams, temples, and for the home. The goal is not to pictorialize, exoticize, or aestheticize, but to convey the importance of place-making at thresholds throughout South India and examine similarities/differences with American culture. With heightened sensitivity towards our surroundings, we all may derive a deeper sense of place.
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