‘Why do you fall in love? Why do you worship Vishnu and Shiva?’ : Decolonising Collecting through the Visual-Material Cosmos of a Nation’s ‘Interior Designers’

Manuela Ciotti

doi:10.1080/09528822.2023.2251855

Titel

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

Decolonising Collecting through the Visual-Material Cosmos of a Nation’s ‘Interior Designers’

Autor*in

Manuela Ciotti

Universität Wien

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.

Stichwort

Jagdish MittalVijay Kumar Aggarwal and Om Prakash Jaincollectingdecolonisationpublic trustprivate museumintersectionalityMarwari castegenderepistemic home rulephilantrophyIndia

Objekt-Typ

journal article

Sprache

Englisch [eng]

Persistent identifier

phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:2044734

DOI

10.1080/09528822.2023.2251855

Erschienen in

Titel

Third Text

Band