The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan

Ahilan Ratnamohan's parents emigrated to Australia just before the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka. There, his father was captivated by the late-night news, repeating the newsreader's words in the hope of making his Sri Lankan accent disappear, believing that English would offer more opportunities to him and his family.  

And so Ahilan never learned Tamil. He experienced this as a loss: after all, Jaffna Tamil isn’t learned through textbooks or by watching the news. Only through (grand)parents and the community pass the language on, generation by generation. So, during the COVID crisis, Ratnamohan asked his mother to Skype with him weekly and teach him his mother tongue – finally, after all these years.  

The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan (working title) is a performance in Tamil. After hours of study, Ahilan brings us a personal story of memory, loss, the fascination of language, identity, and diaspora. His mother sits beside him onstage, acting as his language teacher: correcting him, prompting him, and operating the English/Dutch surtitles. Her perspective also shines through in this subtle intergenerational dynamic.   

•  Ahilan Ratnamohan creates interdisciplinary performances in collaboration with non-classically trained performers. After trying for a professional European football career, since 2007 he has focused on performing arts, first in Sydney and later based in Antwerp. With sports and language-learning processes as his main interests, he is developing three trajectories in his artistic practice: research into the choreography of football, research into the performativity of language lessons, and collaboration with the Star Boy Collective. Ratnamohan is currently an artist in residence at Kaaitheater.