Culture Days: Exploring the art of Kolam with Tam Fam Lit Jam
Join PAMA and Tam Fam Lit Jam for an exciting event featuring the Kolam! Kolam is a traditional art form that began in India and has been passed down through generations. It is both a creative practice and a way for communities to share stories, values and connections. Over time, Kolam has evolved in different regions and remains an important cultural tradition for Tamil communities around the world.
In this welcoming, intergenerational and queer-positive space, participants will:
- Learn about the history, meaning and cultural significance of Kolam
- Take part in creating Kolam designs together
- Share stories, memories and experiences connected to Kolam and community traditions
Everyone is welcome to come together to learn, create and celebrate this vibrant cultural art form.
Registration Information:
- Registration is required. Offered by donation for Ontario Culture Days. Proceeds support PAMA’s Creative Access Fund.
- This program is drop-in, but there will be a special presentation at 3 p.m.
- This is a Tamil-centering event, but all are welcome to attend in the spirit of care and respect.
- The workshops will be conducted by Nedra Rodrigo, Geetha Sukumaran and Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy.
- Light refreshments will be offered.
About the artists:
Nedra Rodrigo is the founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium at York University, and the bilingual event series, The Tam Fam Lit Jam. She is a translator, academic, curator of multi-arts events and Advisor for the Tamil Community Centre Project in Scarborough, Ontario. Nedra’s published translations include In the Shadow of the Sword and quintet Prison of Dreams for which she received the Tamil Literary Garden’s Translation award for 2024. Her essays and translations of poetry have featured in several prominent journals and anthologies. She co-edited Tamil Terrains with Geetha Sukumaran. She is a recipient of the PEN Translates SALT award for 2025, awarded by English PEN in collaboration with South Asian Literature in Translation, University of Chicago. Nedra has conducted workshops in community capacity building, literature, archives, Tamil culture and translation in schools, universities and community.
Geetha Sukumaran is a Tamil poet, writer, academic and bilingual translator. She is the recipient of the 2019 SPARROW R. Thyagarajan Literary Award for her Tamil poetry collection, Otrai Pakadaiyil Enchum Nampikkai (The Hope Set in a Single Die). In 2021, she published Tea: A Concoction of Dissonance, a collaborative book of poetry and art with poet P. Ahilan and artist Vaidheki. Her English translation volumes of P. Ahilan’s poems appeared as Then There Were No Witnesses (2018) and A Smile Drying on a Vine (2025). She coedited Tamil Terrains with Nedra Rodrigo and served on the senior editorial board for AtoZ of Conflict. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Feeding City Lab in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research examines food in the context of conflict, climate breakdown, gendered food labour, and everyday resistance.
Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy is a second-generation Tamil settler writer, researcher, and artist. Her writing has been published in Porter House Review and Living Hyphen, and she has also completed projects for Heritage Toronto and the Tamil Archive Project. In her work, she is inspired by the processes of carving, dismantling, weaving, and binding.
Registration
Registration ends 9/19/2026 12:00 PM EDT