rebecca devika dharmapalan published by daylon hicks
Rebecca Devika Dharmapalan is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist, and social theorist whose practice spans multiple disciplines, from writing and photography to research-driven art. What makes her work unique is the way she immerses herself in historical and political knowledge, translating it into creative forms that bridge past and future. Her practice is as much about learning and investigation as it is about artistic production, using research as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling, theory, and visual expression.
Her interest in revolutionary movements was sparked by her upbringing in Oakland, California, where she first encountered the lasting impact of the Black Panther Party. This curiosity evolved into a deep exploration of how political activism, gender, and history intersect, ultimately informing her creative output. Her book, My Pen is Sharp Like the Gun in My Hand: On the Revolutionary Feminism of the Tamil Tigers, exemplifies this approach. In it, she examines the lives of women cadres of the LTTE, fusing oral histories, photography, and political theory to illuminate how revolutionary Tamil women challenged and redefined the boundaries of feminist thought. Rather than simply documenting history, she treats research as a creative material, transforming facts and archival imagery into a narrative that emphasizes power, memory, and representation.
The work has resonated internationally, featured in book talks and public conversations across London at The Common Press, Basel at Civic HGK, and Paris at La Régulière. These presentations situate the project within a broader transnational dialogue, allowing it to engage diverse audiences and intellectual contexts. At the core of her practice is a commitment to research as an active, evolving process: she studies historical materials, tests ideas through experimentation, and synthesizes complex bodies of knowledge into forms that are both intellectually rigorous and visually compelling. Rather than treating research as a preliminary stage, she approaches it as a creative method in itself—one that continuously reshapes the work as it unfolds.
For her, the creative process is inseparable from exploration and inquiry. Through a sustained dialogue between research, art, and theory, she transforms historical knowledge into a living, dynamic practice that resists static interpretation. Her work does not merely revisit the past; it activates it, using storytelling as a critical tool to interrogate and reimagine narratives of activism and feminism. In doing so, she places importance on creative practice as a site of knowledge, one capable of honoring historical struggle while opening space for new ways of thinking, acting, and envisioning strong futures.