M.I.A. The Tamil child who only knew how to paint by Arantxa Mareñá https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc M.I.A. went from sitting in the back row at school to being a famous artivist en-us 2017-11-13 10:56:08 UTC 2025-11-26 13:08:00 UTC hello@padlet.com M.I.A. is a British rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, artivist and refugee. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206167156 2017-11-13 11:01:59 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206167156 She was born in London but when she was 6 months old they moved to Jaffna, a tamil city in the north of Sri Lanka. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206167954 2017-11-13 11:05:28 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206167954 Sri Lanka is a little beautiful island country in South Asia, located southwest of India and northeast of the Maldives. It has endless beachs, timeless ruins, welcoming people, oodles of elephants, rolling surf, cheap prices, fun trains but also a recently ended civil war and lots of poverty. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206168951 2017-11-13 11:09:20 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206168951 The Tamil people are an ethnic minority in Sri Lanka. They comprise the 24.8 of the population. They have been oppressed and still are in northern Sri Lanka. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206170598 2017-11-13 11:16:22 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206170598 M.I.A. is a tamil girl who had to seat in the back row of school as she was a Tamil and she was darker. She says :" The classes there were sometimes sorted into a hierarchy of your skin tone. So the fairer-skinned kids sat at the front row, and the darker-skinned kids sat at the back by the poor ones who played out in the street all day long. They would turn up to school with no clothes on and they sat in the back row. I’m a Tamil, so I had darker skin, so I was sat in the back row… arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206172067 2017-11-13 11:21:30 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206172067 But she was very good at drawing and she became famous in her class for her art. That was her passport to the front row. Later on she became a visual artist and afterwards a singer. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206172499 2017-11-13 11:23:26 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206172499 When she was 9 she fled violence in Sri Lanka with her mother and her siblings and they moved to the UK looking for political asylum as her dad was a Tamil activist. Her works of art were a way of maintaining her identity in a completely different culture. They were a way of communicating, too as she could not speak English at first. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206184345 2017-11-13 12:05:46 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206184345 In this stencil she represents a woman who belongs to the Tamil Tigers, which was a guerrilla organization that sought the independence of the Tamil people. The stencil is stained in electric red, maybe representing blood. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206185736 2017-11-13 12:11:06 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206185736 Later on she became a singer and I have chosen the song "Borders"as a representation of her work.In the video she is a refugee speaking for refugees. The video recalls all forms of migrations in the developing world. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206186627 2017-11-13 12:14:44 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206186627 I chose this artivist as I went to Sri Lanka 3 years ago and I was touched by the story of the Tamils and the savage oppression and violence they suffered during their civil war and still suffer now silently. I believe thanks to artists like M.I.A. this conflicts are known to the world. I firmly believe art is a big weapong to spread social injustice. arantxamarena https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206187291 2017-11-13 12:17:20 UTC https://padlet.com/arantxamarena/2322uacguzxc/wish/206187291