This interdisciplinary scholarly catalogue examines Motherland, an important series of photo-performances by the acclaimed artist Pushpamala N. on the Indian nation personified as woman, mother, and goddess. The series shows Pushpamala taking on Mother India?s myriad personifications: nubile beauty and saintly renunciant; ...militant goddess wearing a garland of skulls or receiving the ultimate sacrifice of a warrior?s head; the mothersurgeon activating the birth of model citizens; and destitute widow, bent from years of abject labor. As she does so, she reveals that nations are invented, as are national embodiments. The artist?s burden is to reveal the ingredients of such inventions.
Monica Juneja is Professor of Global Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Her research and publications focus on transculturation and visual representation, disciplinary practices of art history in South Asia, gender and political iconography, history of visuality in early modern South Asia and architectural histories and heritage. She is the author of the recently published Disaster as Image: Iconographies and Media Strategies across Asia and Europe; EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object. Her forthcoming book is Can Art History be made Global? Meditations from the Periphery. Monica Juneja edits the Series Visual and Media Histories(Routledge), is on the editorial board of Visual History of Islamic Cultures (De Gruyter), Ding, Materialitat, Geschichte (Bohlau), Asthetische Praxis (Brill), History of Humanities (University of Chicago Press), and is co-editor of the Journal of Transcultural Studies.
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies, and Chair of the Department of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She has published extensively on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy. Her published works include The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India and Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation; and edited volumes, Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India, and Empires of Vision (co-edited). She is a co-founder of Tasveerghar: A Digital Network of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveerghar.net). Her current work is a collaborative digital humanities project titled “No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies of Gandhi and Mao.”.
Monica Juneja is Professor of Global Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Her research and publications focus on transculturation and visual representation, disciplinary practices of art history in South Asia, gender and political iconography, history of visuality in early modern South Asia and architectural histories and heritage. She is the author of the recently published Disaster as Image: Iconographies and Media Strategies across Asia and Europe; EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object. Her forthcoming book is Can Art History be made Global? Meditations from the Periphery. Monica Juneja edits the Series Visual and Media Histories(Routledge), is on the editorial board of Visual History of Islamic Cultures (De Gruyter), Ding, Materialitat, Geschichte (Bohlau), Asthetische Praxis (Brill), History of Humanities (University of Chicago Press), and is co-editor of the Journal of Transcultural Studies.
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies, and Chair of the Department of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She has published extensively on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy. Her published works include The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India and Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation; and edited volumes, Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India, and Empires of Vision (co-edited). She is a co-founder of Tasveerghar: A Digital Network of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveerghar.net). Her current work is a collaborative digital humanities project titled “No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies of Gandhi and Mao.”.
Monica Juneja is Professor of Global Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Her research and publications focus on transculturation and visual representation, disciplinary practices of art history in South Asia, gender and political iconography, history of visuality in early modern South Asia and architectural histories and heritage. She is the author of the recently published Disaster as Image: Iconographies and Media Strategies across Asia and Europe; EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object. Her forthcoming book is Can Art History be made Global? Meditations from the Periphery. Monica Juneja edits the Series Visual and Media Histories(Routledge), is on the editorial board of Visual History of Islamic Cultures (De Gruyter), Ding, Materialitat, Geschichte (Bohlau), Asthetische Praxis (Brill), History of Humanities (University of Chicago Press), and is co-editor of the Journal of Transcultural Studies.
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies, and Chair of the Department of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She has published extensively on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy. Her published works include The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India and Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation; and edited volumes, Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India, and Empires of Vision (co-edited). She is a co-founder of Tasveerghar: A Digital Network of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveerghar.net). Her current work is a collaborative digital humanities project titled “No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies of Gandhi and Mao.”.
Monica Juneja is Professor of Global Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Her research and publications focus on transculturation and visual representation, disciplinary practices of art history in South Asia, gender and political iconography, history of visuality in early modern South Asia and architectural histories and heritage. She is the author of the recently published Disaster as Image: Iconographies and Media Strategies across Asia and Europe; EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object. Her forthcoming book is Can Art History be made Global? Meditations from the Periphery. Monica Juneja edits the Series Visual and Media Histories(Routledge), is on the editorial board of Visual History of Islamic Cultures (De Gruyter), Ding, Materialitat, Geschichte (Bohlau), Asthetische Praxis (Brill), History of Humanities (University of Chicago Press), and is co-editor of the Journal of Transcultural Studies.
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies, and Chair of the Department of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She has published extensively on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy. Her published works include The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India and Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation; and edited volumes, Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India, and Empires of Vision (co-edited). She is a co-founder of Tasveerghar: A Digital Network of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveerghar.net). Her current work is a collaborative digital humanities project titled “No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies of Gandhi and Mao.”.
ISBN
9789392130113
Binding
Hardback
Page Extent
136
Weight (kg)
1.7
Height (in)
10.63
Width (in)
9.06
Subject
Performing Arts
Published Date
28/02/22
Publisher
Roli Books
Reviews
Biblio
Published Date:- January 5, 2023
Pushpamala's recreations of colonial ethnographic photographs, popular prints, and commercial films "dismantle" the original image as an "ideological project" of a capitalist economy promoted by the nation-state. Her amazing embodiment of Abanindranath Tagore's painting Bharat Mata is a "politico-ethical resuscitation" of an ascetic-looking mother figure from an early moment of nationalism that was "crowded out" a hundred years later by a more muscular form of Mother India that marks "the ascendency of Hindutva accompanied by India's entry into a globalized world economy"
IN STUDIO PORTRAIT with Flag, Trishul and Om Flag (2009), Pushpamala N stands in a simple tableau. Dressed as the goddess Bharat Mata, she holds her implements in front of a small-scale, brightly painted, sharped-tooth lion, which is placed in front of the Indian flag, which in turn is pinned open on the floral textiles hung on lines as a backdrop. Layered and repetitious, every prop and costume falls approximately into the basic patriotic colour scheme of saffron and green, with liberal amounts of gold added in. Though immediately recognizable as a Bharat Mata image, there is no particular visual reference point, as there is for many of Pushpamala’s photo-performances. We should assume that this is deliberate, because the artist’s images include many more precise simulacra. This image, by contrast, imitates studio photographs in which ordinary people use sets and props to take on new personas. In many cases, the illusion is far from perfect; that does not seem to have affected the popularity of the practice.