‘Why do you fall in love? Why do you worship Vishnu and Shiva?

Autor(en)
Manuela Ciotti
Abstrakt

Jagdish Mittal, Vijay Kumar Aggarwal and Om Prakash (O P) Jain's biographies share a major commitment: the creation of art institutions in post-independent India. Labelled as India's ‘interior designers', these collectors have reshaped the visual-material cosmos that had been profoundly altered by colonialism both at home and abroad over the centuries. Formerly colonised and white-dominated communities' collecting practices are notably absent within the existing scholarship. Crucially, their practices are not premised on the appropriation and possession of the ‘other' through imperial conquest - at the centre of a large number of studies that analyse its long-term effects. By contrast, India's ‘interior designers’ are driven by the re-possession of the self, ownership linked to the nation as well as preservation logics. This article argues that in order to decolonise the study of collecting, the epistemes governing such practices also need to be urgently foregrounded.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Journal
third text
Band
37
Seiten
262-284
Anzahl der Seiten
23
ISSN
0952-8822
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2023.2251855
Publikationsdatum
12-2023
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
504017 Kulturanthropologie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Cultural Studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f612418a-68a0-4dfe-a49e-4e626f582842