Culture clash

Mathangi Arulpragasam, usually called Maya, was born in London in 1975. When she was six months old, her parents returned to their native Sri Lanka and her father became involved in politics. In Sri Lanka, from the Seventies onwards, this was high-stakes stuff. Violence between the minority Tamils and the Sinhalese majority intensified. Divisions on ethnic and religious lines. Shootings. Riots. Bombings. Rising numbers of dead. Many more displaced. Civil war.

Maya’s mother moved the family, first to Tamil Nadu in India and then back to London, where the mother and children were designated refugees. On the rare occasions Maya saw her father, he was introduced as “uncle” so that she and her siblings couldn’t accidentally inform of his whereabouts.

She grew up in a council flat in Mitcham. Attended a normal comprehensive school and then convinced the interview panel at Central St Martins to let her study fine art and film. In 2003, Maya made her first single Galang, dancing in the video in a vintage T-shirt and denim, the style of many London club girls at the time Her first album Arular, named for her father, came out in 2005, followed by Kala, named for her mother, in 2007. Both received worldwide critical praise and charted globally. Three more albums followed.

She’s been nominated for an Oscar, three Grammys and the Mercury Prize. She’s presented herself as a Bollywood goddess in her video for 2007 single Jimmy, made gun signs in sportswear for 2009’s Paper Planes, had contractions on stage, nine months pregnant, at the Grammys, wearing almost totally sheer Henry Holland, and – showing she’d truly joined the cultural elite, but still wasn’t precious – attended 2010’s Met Gala in a golden dress Alexander Wang designed for Gap.

Her current project is MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A., a documentary directed by her friend Stephen Loveridge that uses footage Maya has shot throughout her life. It feels intimate.

M.I.A on the importance of fashion for self-expression