Talia Ramkilawan

Heart 4 Sale

Cynical, thotty, and in love: Talia Ramkilawan’s radically soft sculptures 

"Although at various times, I have been described as an Indian South African, a South African Indian, and Asiatic, a charou, a coolie; I know I am South African. So entrenched is the stereotype that the unwary can easily be trapped into the sense of displacement which hovers over migrant and expatriate communities. I am a South African playwright. I have never heard Athol Fugard being described as a European playwright or Mbongeni Ngema as a Zulu playwright. I have no doubt of my South Africanness..." Ronnie Govender in conversation with Rajendra Chetty (2001).

Through forced migration from South Asia, Indian labourers were brought to now KwaZulu-Natal to cultivate the land that European farmers dispossessed natives of. Today, sixteen decades later, this history of indentured labour has left behind a violent legacy. Displaced, erased, and censored into assimilation, the South African Indian heritage continues to be invalidated or unconsidered in mainstream discourses. 

Since this does not exclude the visual, Talia Ramkilawan makes work that affirms her existence. Blending still life and portraiture, Ramkilawan disrupts the long-held, incessantly reproduced rendering of Indian South Africa because “The best way I can heal my community is healing myself first.”

A Michaelis School of Fine Art sculpture major, Ramkilawan is a queer South African Indian artist and high school teacher. She makes radically soft sculptures. 

Painting primarily with yarn, Ramkilawan’s still lifes and portraits are made using the rug-hooking technique. While studying, Ramkilawan grew despondent of the materials commonly associated with sculptural work because they felt too harsh for the tone she wanted her work to speak in.  “I have always believed that disruption does not always have to be loud. It can be soft and meditative. 

Adopted to distance Ramkilawan’s practice from the rigidity of metals, stones, and woods to the fluidity of tapestries, rug-hooking involves threading yarn into an open-weave fabric. By repeatedly threading the yarn through the material, loops come together to create a tufted picture with a rug-like texture. 

Similar to mantra meditation, when the focus is on a mantra (which could be a syllable, word, or phrase), Ramkilawan’s technique requires her to focus her energy on repeating a particular motion. The subtle vibrations associated with repetition can be cathartically charged. “So while sitting in my apartment and appearing to play with wool all day, I’m doing internal work,” she says.

Politically cynical, materially superficial, thotty, and in love, the queer Indian femmes depicted in Ramkilawan’s scenes exist. However on Ramkilawan’s canvas, a speculative fiction utopia, they go uninterrupted by violence. Without the distraction of violence, the subjects in this body of work are free to focus on love. Documenting the moments in-between, Ramkilawan describes Heart 4 Sale as “a dedication to the habitual and everyday occurrences that have become significant since the presences of a significant other.” Charged with humour and doused in love, this Heart 4 Sale reflects the soft underbelly of love, lust and loathing. Whether visualising the act of dreading, embracing, seeking, losing or finding the affections of a lover, Heart 4 Sale is a testament to the often painful, sometimes awkward, but always strengthening effects of choosing to be vulnerable. So says Ramkilawan in closing:  “I'm in love now and moving in relation to someone else. It's put a mirror up to me and helped me see myself. It's pushing my work in new directions and I'm excited to see where it takes me.”

- Nkosazana Hlalethwa