Purvajo-ni Aankh: Through the eye of the ancestor
This exhibition, translated as ‘Through the eye of the ancestor', is an exhibition of anthropological photography pertaining to the cultural heritage of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (Adivasi) of India.
Image: Bhil husband and wife: 1953, Fürer-Haimendorf Collection (SOAS Library PPMS19_6_BHIL_0142)
Purvajo-ni Aankh is being curated by members of the Museum of Voice and Adivasi Academy in Tejgadh, Gujarat in early January to combine with the ‘Global Languages Meet' and the Fourth Chotro conference (for dates, see dates below).
The exhibition follows on from the workshop held in Leipzig in May 2011, at the Grassi Museum fur Volkerkunde, organized by Daniel Rycroft (UEA) and Katja Mueller (Grassi Museum), on the ‘Future of Anthropological Archival Knowledge'. The exhibition articulates how Adivasi cultural representatives negotiate the visual record of colonial and national anthropology, both in their own visual documentary projects and in their ongoing re-interpretation of histories of representation by non-Adivasi groups. The exhibition focuses on the regions of western and central India, and includes material from the SOAS archive (Furer-Haimedorf), the Grassi Museum (Eickstedt archive) and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (Archer and Milward archives). The exhibition is supported by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre (Baroda, Gujarat).
Image: Hero stones near a Bhil village: 1953, Fürer-Haimendorf Collection (SOAS Library PPMS19_6_BHIL_0117).
Key dates
6-7-8 January 2012: The Fourth Chotro Conference on ‘Imagining the Intangible: The Languages, Literature and the Visual Arts of the Indigenous'
This will take place in Baroda on the 6th and the 7th January, and at Tejgadh -- a 90 kms away-- on the 8th January.
7th January 2012: The Global Languages Meet (where we expect representatives of a 1000 languages to remain present) -- this will take place in Baroda.
8th January 2012: The Purvajo-ni Aankh --Through the eye of the ancestor-- photo exhibition-- this will take place at Tejgadh on the 8th January.
The last event, the exhibition, will move to smaller tribal villages on the 9th and the 10th January, and return to Tejgadh for a discussion on Adivasi visual archives on the 11th January.
For more information: