U of T students visited the Scarborough Museum in Thomson Memorial Park to tour an exhibit put on by the Queer Tamil Collective (QTC) — a nonprofit, Toronto-based organization that supports, empowers, and advocates for LGBTQ+ Tamil artists, focusing on the violence that individuals face carrying these intersectional identities. The event coincided with Tamil Heritage Month. Tamil refers…
The gaze that draws you to the reclining figure between the curtains has a name. George Chakravarthi’s “Self-Portrait As An Unknown Devadasi” arranges the London-based artist on a bed to evoke the sort of voyeuristic photographs taken for colonizers in India. Chakravarthi in this image is depicting himself as a devadasi, a traditional class of “affluent…
A Pride celebration in Scarborough on Sunday, June 19 is the first-ever Tamil queer event in Canada. It is also the beginning of something much bigger, a movement to educate and “decolonize” the largest Tamil community outside South Asia. Before the Queer Tamil Collective (QTC) formed, that huge community had not had LGBTQ+ groups specific…
