The Art of the Dot

Anna Laine is an independent researcher in anthropology and artistic practice. She has been trained in photography and art, and holds a PhD in social anthropology from Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her relationship with kolam began in 2003, and the practice developed into the focus of her doctoral thesis. Laine has investigated kolam and its position in Tamil culture during one-year fieldwork and repeated visits to South India, and through a later project among the Tamil diaspora in the UK. The integration between the gestural and the linguistic, between embodied and cognitive knowledge, is a main concern in Laine's work. She argues that it has been vital to learn how to make kolam herself in order to understand the practice, and she uses artistic forms in addition to academic texts to subsequently convey her knowledge. The doctoral thesis, In Conversation with the Kolam Practice: Auspiciousness and Artistic Experiences among Women in Tamilnadu, South India, includes photographic essays and it has been further transformed into textile and video works presented at art spaces in Stockholm, London and New Delhi. During Laine's following research on contemporary art and migration within the British Tamil diaspora, kolam emerged as a participatory art project at a suburban shopping area in collaboration with the local refugee centre. When Laine teaches kolam in anthropology and art programmes, she often includes workshops where the students can try the powder material and thus become more familiar with the practice.