North India, Imperial Mughal Prince Salim returning from a hunt c1610. Bequest of Miss Gwendolen Griffiths 1968
 

INDIAN ART SYMPOSIUM:
Religion, global capitalism and the re-inventions of the mythical

Sunday, 20 January 2008
2pm - 5pm
Centenary Auditorium, Lower Level 1

A symposium on Indian art, held in anticipation of the exhibition Intimate Encounters: Indian Paintings from Australian Collections (opening 22 February 2008).

Three eminent international scholars will present their research on topics relating to Indo-Islamic painting, as well as the interesting directions that the visual arts are currently taking in a thriving, global India.

Admission free. No bookings required.

The Hindu Folk Royal Sufi Mystical Popular Chandayana
Dr Naman Ahuja's talk leads us through a fascinating body of the earliest Indo-Islamic paintings of the 14th and 15th centuries. His research on the Chandayana, a medieval Sufi story reveals how it was, in fact, a folk story about a curious love-triangle, which made a strong bid to become a part of the canons of Indian literature, both Islamic and Hindi. By absorbing a raunchy folk ballad, it also became a tool to attract disparate communities to Sufi shrines, which were themselves a space for dissent within Islamic kingdoms. The paintings themselves are of the greatest art-historical importance revealing a curious admixture of Jain, Persian, Mamluk and various Indian styles revealing an early phase of experimentation that was to become fixed later in the Mughal period.

Reincarnations of the Temple: Akshardham
Dr Kavita Singh's presentation will discuss the Akshardham complex in Delhi, a spectacular religious site constructed recently by the Swaminarayan sect, the fastest-growing Hindu sect in the world today. Claiming to be a 'revival' of ancient traditions, Akshardham is actually an entirely new phenomenon that combines temple, theme park and museum, and serves a revivalist agenda by making the past seem easily accessible and consumable.

Popular Festivals and Populist Visual Culture
Dr Parul Dave Mukherji's talk will focus on the manner in which popular festivals in Gujarat in western India were appropriated by the State to promote its agenda of espousing global capitalism. The Garba or the nine-day dance festival and the Uttarayana or the Kite festival were drawn upon heavily in the state sponsored Vibrant Gujarat campaign. Via these festivals, it aspired to project Gujarat as the mythical topos, the land of Lord Krishna and primarily addressed the Non-Resident Indians, the potential investors. Deploying digital photography, these extremely slick and professional posters and hoardings engulfed the public space to project an image of a peaceful and vibrant Gujarat in the wake of post-Godhra and post-Akshardham tragedies. Repeated emphasis on peace and prosperity betray the State's anxiety over its complicity in the recent history of violence.

About the speakers
Drs Naman P. Ahuja, Parul Dave Mukherji and Kavita Singh are professors of Indian art at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, a premiere post-graduate research centre in New Delhi, India. Dr Ahuja specialises in the origins of Indian religious imagery in the Ancient period of India. Dr Dave Mukherji teaches Aesthetics and Critical theories of Art and Dr Singh specialises in both the history of institutions that preserve and promote Indian art as well as Indian miniature painting.