South Asian Diaspora Artists Collective

South Asian Diaspora Artists Collective

The South Asian Diaspora Artists Collective (SADAC) is a member-led group using art as a tool for resistance, healing, community building, and liberation.

SADAC’s second zine/literary magazine is an anthology of works inspired by the prompt ‘Diaspora’s Tongue: Language and Silence in the Diaspora’ published July 2018.

My submission was accepted and included alongside 30 other contributors.

Through my illustration I sought to depict the loss of a mother tongue.

There is a misconception within the Tamil diaspora community that those who do not speak Tamil have no understanding or love for their history and their culture. As a result young Tamils speak less and less out of fear of public shaming, resulting in their erasure from the Tamil diaspora experience. This loss of a mother tongue is rarely associated with the effects of a decades long civil war back home. Violence, dispossession and displacement from a homeland are at the core of this loss.

In this hand drawn ink illustration I attempted to connect this loss and associated shame to that violence.