Nauras:
53-day show from Jan 27 to showcase rarely-focused culture of southern sultanates
New Delhi, Jan 24: The eclectic but
relatively neglected art of southern India during roughly 400 years till the
19th century when the peninsular belt was particularly cosmopolitan will be on
display at the National Museum (NM) here from next week.
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| Ajaib al Makhluqat |
Titled ‘Nauras: The Many Arts of the Deccan’, the 53-day exhibition
starting on January 27 is being organised in collaboration with The Aesthetics
Project which is a platform of academics, artisans and performers to explore a
variety of topics on India’s art history and its aesthetic heritage.
Concluding on March 20, the show,
curated by art historians Dr Preeti Bahadur and Dr Kavita Singh, will have all
but one of its 120-odd objects from the museum itself — a chunk of them from
its reserves. An exquisite selection of the famed Ragamala painting will be
loaned from Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, making it yet another joint
venture for NM in the recent past.
The exhibition will also throw
broader academic light on vintage Deccani arts, as NM and Aesthetics Project
are hosting a two-day symposium in the capital on January 28 and 29. That event
at Indian International Centre (IIC) will feature 10 presentations by leading
art historians of the country.
NM Director-General Dr Venu
Vasudevan noted that ‘Nauras’ holds
special relevance given that the exhibition would be the first-ever showcasing
Deccan’s art between the 16th and the 19th centuries when the region witnessed
a lot of give-and-take in its culture.
“While exhibiting the arts, we are
also outlining the fascinating history of the region,” he said. “The exhibition
is the result of six months of work. It must trigger fresh academic and general
interest on Deccani culture of the yore.”
The 2014-floated The Aesthetics
Project’s trustee and sponsor Renu Judge said ‘Nauras’ would lend unprecedented focus to the art of the southern
sultanates known for their tolerance, syncretism and composite culture. “The
Deccani art has rather been under-researched; its contribution to the Indian
culture often less acknowledged. ‘Nauras’
that way will be momentous,” she added.
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| al-Buraq |
Dr Vasudevan and Ms Judge will open
the exhibition at 11 am on January 27.
Split into six sections, ‘Nauras’ highlights Deccani
cosmopolitanism, its singing sultans, perfumes, the Mughal Presence, trade
goods and royal lineages.
Important objects at ‘Nauras’ include a painting of al-Buraq (a marbled painting from
Bijapur showing Rustom capturing a horse), leaves from an early Ragamala from
Ahmednagar or Bijapur, a Kalamkari coverlet from Bijapur of 1630, an
18th-century Qanat from Burhanpur, an
embroidered temple hanging from Vijayanagara, the Kitab-i-Nauras manuscript from Bijapur, Deccani copies of the Ajaib al Makhluqat, a book of the
wonders of the world, and the armour of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who spent
years fighting military campaigns in the Deccan.
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| Kitab-i-Nauras |
Dr Bahadur, who along with Dr Singh
of Jawaharlal Nehru University here began gleaning the Deccani artworks from
the NM reserves since September last year, noted that the highly skilled
artists and craftsmen of Bahamani Sultanate produced exquisite paintings,
manuscripts, metal-ware, textiles, and arms.
“The long coastline of the peninsula
fostered trade contacts with regions as far as Southeast Asia, Africa and
Europe and goods from the Deccan were in high demand in many parts of the
world. Intercultural contacts also resulted in the adaptation of aesthetic
tastes and diverse traditions at the local level,” she said, adding: “Deccani
advances in music and the arts had a profound influence on Indian art in the
north as well.”
Dr Singh said even as the art of the
Mughals is widely known and celebrated, the contemporaneous kingdoms of
Ahmednagar, Bijapur, Golconda, Berar and Bidar in the Deccan have been
comparatively ignored.
The IIC symposium will have five
speakers each on the two days. The talks by scholars Navina Haidar, Naman
Ahuja, Deborah Hutton, Mark Richard Brand, Katherine Butler Schofield, Jagdish
Mittal, Omana Eappen, Susan Stronge, Ali Akbar Husain and Emma Flatt will be
followed by conversations with experts.
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| Qanat |
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