Migration research in collaboration with Tamil Sri Lankan artists in the British diaspora

This research exposition investigates how artistic practice is used among British Tamil artists with a Sri Lankan background to explore their multiple belongings and in-between notions of homing and migrating. It is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in London, Belfast, and Jaffna. Through the author’s position in the overlap between art practice and anthropology, the exposition poses questions about the possibilities of an interdisciplinary approach to artistic research. The additional overlap with the Tamil artists’ profession challenged the relationship between self and other in the research process, and knowledge has consequently been produced in a collaborative form.