Jan 29 2025 to Jan 29 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

This talk by commences by introducing the audience to the sacred bronzes created by a master sculptor around the year 1000, and suggests that his inspiration may well have been child-saint Sambandar’s opening hymn that hails god Shiva as “the thief who stole my heart.”

Vidya Dehejia explores this sensuous imagery before moving to ask questions of this material that have not been asked before. Where did the Cholas acquire the copper required to cast the many temple bronzes that are solid heavy pieces of metal? Why were the Cholas obsessed with island Sri Lanka? What were the circumstances that permitted the creation of hundreds of temples and vast numbers of sacred bronzes despite the constant warfare that the Chola monarchs were engaged in? What was the source of the extraordinarily vast number of pearls that, together with coral, rubies and diamonds, were embedded in gold jewelry gifted to adorn temple bronzes? Why did the Cholas cover the walls of their temple walls with inscriptions– some 13,000 in total – using temple walls as if they were the public records office?

A Q&A session with the audience will follow.
Speaker
Vidya Dehejia
Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian Art, Columbia University

Vidya Dehejia is Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian Art at Columbia University, New York. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses and has guided doctoral students on South Asian art from the early Buddhist period to British colonial art.

Over the past 45 years, she has combined research with teaching and exhibition-related activities around the world. She has done extensive field work in South Asia, with visits to sites of importance in Southeast Asia, gaining familiarity with the art of the region. She has explored at length the theoretical basis for the portrayal of visual narratives in the context of India’s sculpture and painting and examined issues of gender and colonialism.

Over the years, her work has ranged from Buddhist art of the centuries BC to the esoteric temples of North India, and from the sacred bronzes of South India to art under the British Raj. Dr. Vidya Dehejia also has Management and curatorial experience at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries providing a broad mandate to convey the excitement of the field of South Asian art to non-specialist audiences.

Her latest book, published by Princeton University Press in 2021 is The Thief who Stole My Heart: Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855-1280, from which she shares insights in her talk.