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

Author(s)

Manuela Ciotti

Abstract

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(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

third text

Volume

37

Pages

262-284

No. of pages

23

ISSN

0952-8822

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2023.2251855

Publication date

12-2023

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504017 Cultural anthropology

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Cultural Studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/f612418a-68a0-4dfe-a49e-4e626f582842