Connecting communltles through colours

65-year-old artist's mission is to promote rangoli, a 5,000-year-old form of Indian art, in all its different shapes and forms.

- Kevin Lim

In a corner at Ikea Tampines, the grey concrete floor becomes artist Vijaya Mohan's canvas.

Together with her co-artist, Nithiya Ramprasad, 42, she lays a pre-cut blue plastic sheet measuring 3m by 2m on the ground and gets to work.

Like a paintbrush, Vijaya's fin-gers make deft strokes across empty space, filling it up with colours from glitter powder, artificial flowers, sago and acrylic gemstones, among other materials, creating an intricate multicoloured rangoli in about two hours.

Rangoli is a 5,000-year- old form of Indian folk floor art comprising ornamental designs with symmetrical and geometrical shapes.

Traditionally, coloured rice powders and organic, mainly edible materials are used to create the auspicious designs just outside the main door of a house or apartment.

Rangolis are drawn on festive occasions such as Deepavali, New Year, weddings, childbirth and birthdays.

The word "rangoli" comes from the Sanskrit "rangavalli", which means "rows of colour". Designs for rangolis are usually taken from nature, with plants, trees, birds and animals as their themes.

Rangoli has been a part of Vijaya's life for 60 years, since she first fell in love with the art while growing up in her home town of Trichy in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

She is the youngest in the family and has six siblings.

Her mother was a housewife and her father a school principal.

"I used to watch my mother create rangoli on the floor at home. The floors were quite muddy, and the contrast of the white rice powder against the dark brown ground caught my eye," said the 65-year-old, who came to Singapore in 1992 and became a citizen in 2005.

Two of her brothers were working as accountants in Singapore, and she and her family came to join them, seeking better prospects.