In art, the body is a carrier of thoughts rather than a representation of its physicality alone. It can be a vehicle for capturing the various moods, energies or values that drive society. Looked at another way, artistic imagery, in turn, also has an influence on people—decisions on what kind of bodies have been regarded as being ideal in different periods can make for a fascinating comparative history.  Prof. Ahuja curated the landmark exhibition The Body in Indian Art & Thought in 2013 that redefined the presentation of Indian art in exhibitions across the world. In this lecture he explains why studies in art history have been making the subject of ‘the body’ their focus since the 1990s, in order to address if “The Body” offers an alternative narrative for history museums.


Speaker


Naman P. Ahuja is Professor of Art History at JNU where he is also Dean of the School of Arts & Aesthetics. He is the General Editor of Marg, India’s oldest publishing house dedicated to art and culture. He has curated some of the most important exhibitions of Indian art in the past ten years, including: The Body in Indian Art & Thought which was shown at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and the National Museum in Delhi in 2013; and India & The World, in which 120 objects from the British Museum were staged in strategic dialogue with Indian objects at the CSMVS in Mumbai and the National Museum Delhi. These exhibitions have received critical acclaim for generating narratives of Indian history within a globalised world cognisant of issues of caste, gender, comparative religion and decolonisation.


Moderator

Noorashikin binte Zulkifli is Senior Curator for Islamic art at ACM. She developed the current Islamic Art gallery as part of ACM’s revamp, and curated the exhibition Ilm: Science and Imagination in the Islamic World (2016). Noora worked on the revamp of the Peranakan Museum, with a special interest in Muslim Peranakan communities. Before this, she was a curator at the Malay Heritage Centre in Kampong Gelam, Singapore’s historic Muslim quarter and port town. She holds an MA in Interactive Media and Critical Theory from Goldsmiths College. Noora’s research interests revolve around Islamic Southeast Asia with a focus on manuscripts and their related arts.


 

 

Organised in conjunction with the exhibition Body & Spirit : The Human Body in Thought and Practice