TRACING THE CULTURAL IDENTITY SHIFTS OF THE TATTAR COMMUNITY OF NORTHERN SRI LANKA BY STUDYING THE TEMPLE JEWELLERY TRADITION

 

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During Rahul Bhattacharya's week-long curatorial workshop, first-year master's students worked together in pairs to create visual representations of the final-year students' dissertations and research processes for this display. For this week, they delved into creating mind maps, exploring narratives and experiences, and attempting to express them visually in displays.

The following display is Safna’s brainchild where she worked on Tracing the Cultural Identity Shifts of the Tattar Community of Northern Sri Lanka by Studying the Temple Jewellery Tradition. It all began when she first saw the jewellery adorned on deities in temples in North Sri Lanka. Intrigued about the craftsmanship and the process, she discovered that a particular community called Tattars, of which only three families survive are its makers. Diving deeper into it, she learned that the Tattar community has long struggled to establish their cultural identities in society. Truth revealed the community faces oppression from higher social classes, prohibited from entering these temples they do not even get acknowledged for the jewellery they make. Three mind maps were made to spread out this dissertation keeping in mind the keywords of the dissertation - community, culture shift, jewellery.

The first mind map was a breakdown of the religious divide of Sri Lanka’s population through which the second map was made. It traced the routes of the Tattar community, their lineage, the current surviving members, and their tradition of jewellery making. Further, we mapped out the works of scholars who have contributed to theories of identity, culture, society, and other such areas. We picked a methodology that was best suited to our topic and expanded the study further.

Dissertation :- Safna Iqbal

Curator:- Aayushi Majithia

Text and Images By:- Aayushi Majithia and Safna Iqbal