In collaboration with Harvard’s Bow and Arrow Press, The Mittal Institute’s Artist in Residence Kabi Raj Lama will lead a three-hour demonstration and workshop on Japanese Woodcut Print-making.
The workshop will begin with Kabi Raj sharing his lithography and woodcut prints. He will discuss his print-making journey and then demonstrate how to make prints by hand using water-based inks and a special tool. After the tutorial, participants are invited to make their own print.
Kabi Raj Lama is a contemporary printmaker based in Kathmandu, who primarily works with lithography and the Japanese mokuhanga (woodcut) medium. His work examines themes of natural disasters, trauma and religion. Lama sees the complexities of natural disasters as multidimensional — affecting both tangible and intangible worlds.
This demonstration is free and open to the public.
Located at the corner of Bow St. and Arrow St. Adams B-Entry basement level.
Chair: Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
Comments by: Alison Nordström, Curator and Historian of Photography
SAI Visiting Artist Faiham Ebra Sharif is a is a freelance multimedia journalist and photographer. He will discuss his current project, Cha Chakra: Tea Tales of Bangladesh, which sheds light on the plight of the tea garden workers of Bangladesh who are among the lowest paid and most vulnerable laborers in the world yet are strangely invisible to the global media. This project aims to collect the undocumented history of the global tea industry through photography, oral histories, and archival materials
The panel will discuss conceptions of “citizenship” in India as related to caste and indigeneity. The discussion will be an opportunity to explore the ways that citizenship and belonging have been constructed through exclusion and marginalization based on social, political, and ethnic lines.
Rajyashri Goody, Visiting Artist, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University
Suraj Yengde, W.E.B. Du Bois Nonresident fellow, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University; Research Associate, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Raile Rocky Ziipao, Arvind Raghunathan and Sribala Subramanian South Asia Visiting Fellow, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University
Moderator: Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Lunch will be provided.
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Ethnicity Migration and Rights (EMR) and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Possible through the generosity of the Asia Center
The Humanities have important work to do in developing societies because they foster creative and critical thinking. For its own intrinsic value, the aesthetic judgment that the Humanities hone affords pleasure of freedom and sociability. And related to those pleasures is the general faculty of judgment that free societies depend on. With the activities of Pre-Texts we gather lessons of philosophy, pedagogy, and art — including vernacular arts — to offer high order learning in low-resourced communities. In collaboration with partners in the Indian education and public health sectors, Cultural Agents hopes to contribute to development in India with Pre-Texts by engaging local strengths to promote: Literacy, Innovation, and Citizenship.
Lunch will be provided during the seminar and will be followed by a demonstration of Pre-Texts with audience participation.
Possible through the generosity of the Asia Center
Kudiyattam is the last living performance tradition of Sanskrit theater in the world. Recognized by UNESCO as preserving “masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity,” this visually powerful tradition is performed by the troupe Nepathya, from central Kerala in South India.
Harvard South Asia Institute is proud to co-sponsor the biennial American Council for Southern Asian Art Symposium. ACSAA symposia serve as opportunities to meet colleagues, reconnect with mentors and graduate school cohorts, and share one’s current research with the field. From senior scholars to graduate students, ACSAA symposia are one of the primary ways ACSAA members gather and support one another, share ideas with a group of like-minded colleagues, and participate in the ACSAA community. We are looking forward to welcoming you all in Boston/Cambridge, MA!
ACSAA 2017 Organizers
Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture Laura Weinstein, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
About the ACSAA
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the study and awareness of the art of South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayan regions. In addition to periodic symposia, usually held every two years, ACSAA pursues these goals through various projects, including its annual bulletin, bibliographies, a color slide project, a microfiche archive and outreach materials. Since its incorporation in 1967, ACSAA has grown from its original fifteen members to an organization of some three hundred individuals and institutions. ACSAA is formally affiliated with the College Art Association (CAA) and the Association of Asian Studies (AAS).
Danish Husain is a poet, actor, filmmaker and theatre director – he is one of the people who have helped revive the lost art form of Urdu storytelling, Dastangoi, and is a columnist with India Today’s opinion website Daily O.
Chair: Ali Asani
Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University
Qissebaazi expands and builds upon traditional storytelling. A multilingual platform with multiple performers, it is theatrical in presentation but still, distinctively, storytelling.
A Harvard South Asia Institute Muslim Societies in South Asia Series
Join us for a screening of Deepa Mehta’s acclaimed film Water (2005; 115 min.), part of the Elements trilogy. Set in 1938 Colonial India, against Mahatma Gandhi’s rise to power, the story begins when eight-year-old Chuyia is widowed and sent to a home where Hindu widows must live in penitence. Chuyia’s feisty presence affects the lives of the other residents, including a beautiful young widow, who falls for a Gandhian idealist.
https://youtu.be/2R0pRl18js8
This screening is offered in conjunction with the installation Women in South Asian Art, on view in the University Teaching Gallery at Harvard Art Museums from August 26, 2017–January 7, 2018.
Free Admission
Please also join us to continue Mehta’s Elements trilogy with screenings of Fire on Friday, September 29 and Earth on Friday, October 27 at 2 pm in Menschel Hall.
Drawn from the Harvard Art Museums’ renowned South Asian art collection, this University Teaching Gallery installation complements an undergraduate course exploring images of women in South Asian art; the course takes a historical perspective in order to understand the politics of gender and the social status of women in today’s South Asia. In addition to historical examples of female patronage and representations of goddesses, the installation includes a group of objects portraying women as active agents—a lady chasing a cat, for example, or a rare depiction of a female artist. A small group of erotic images invites viewers to consider the relationship between erotic science and the Indic attitude toward the body, in which sexuality and virility are auspicious forces.
The installation’s related course (HAA 183W) is taught by Jinah Kim, the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. The University Teaching Gallery serves faculty and students affiliated with Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. Semester-long installations are mounted in conjunction with undergraduate and graduate courses, supporting instruction in the critical analysis of art and making unique selections from the museums’ collections available to all visitors.
This installation is made possible in part by funding from the Gurel Student Exhibition Fund and the José Soriano Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
