The Vernacular Contemporary

Speaker: Annapurna Garimella

December 3, 2010 | 6.30 pm
Seminar Hall, CSMVS, Mumbai

What might a vernacular be in the field of contemporary visual art in India? Annapurna Garimella’s lecture presents the proposition that the vernacular represents something more and something different from what the folk, the tribal and the traditional have identified historically. Vernacular conveys the present of a visual culture that is both regional and transitional, one that is in the making . This proposition is the basis for an upcoming exhibition of vernacular artists titled “Vernacular, in the Contemporary” at Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon that she and her colleagues at Jackfruit Research and Design are curating.The lecture also presents fieldwork, commissioning and curatorial processes for the show.

Dr. Annapurna Garimella is an art historian who specializes in the art and architecture of India. Based in Bangalore, she is Visiting Faculty at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi and also the Research Editor for Marg Publications, South Asia’s oldest art publication house. Annapurna also heads A.R.T., an organization that gathers resources, promotes research and teaching in art and architectural history, archaeology, crafts, design, and other related disciplines in academic and non-academic fora. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University, where her work focused on religion, kingship, architecture, and urban planning in medieval southern India. She also curated a show at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art on courtly painting and devotion in northern India. Annapurna was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Culture and Society at Bangalore (2000-2002) with the India Foundation of the Arts, and earned several research fellowships, including a Foreign Language Fellowship (five consecutive years) for the study of Hindi and Braj. She has taught at Columbia and Drew Universities, and has lectured at many universities in India. Annapurna has also lectured on previous study tours of India for American museums and two recent Archaeological Institute of America tours of India (2004-2005). Currently her scholarly work focuses on contemporary religiosities, art and education, and Indian modernisms.