The Prismatics of Silk

The Prismatics of Silk

Alexandra Dalferro
Articles

Silk is so famously shimmery because of its prism-like, triangular protein structure that allows it to refract incoming light at different angles and thus to produce different colors. Yet this inherent material brilliance depends on the qualities of the silk threads and environmental conditions, like the amount and type of light. The author expands a literal approach to prismatics to metaphorically encompass the situated and contingent nature of material, bodily engagements with silks and their colors. This essay renders the prismatics of the three “mother colors” of silks in Surin, Thailand to reflect upon how colors are inseparable from sociocultural, economic, political, and historical considerations of their origins.

Color, Graffiti and the Senses: Visitors and Worshippers at Indian Archaeological Sites

Color, Graffiti and the Senses: Visitors and Worshippers at Indian Archaeological Sites

Uthara Suvrathan
Photo Essays

This essay examines ancient Buddhist monastic sites, now archaeological/tourist sites, and the ways in which people experience and interact with the past, mediated through material culture. For example, the historic sites of Ajanta and Ellora in India are known for their vibrantly colored paintings, protected in various ways including signs banning the performance of rituals. And yet, we find that visitors respond to these sites in unexpected ways, for instance, by placing gold foil on carvings of the Buddha as a form of veneration and worship. The traces of this interaction, both past and present, can be seen in various kinds of graffiti and in the use of architectural form and light. By observing contemporary practices and the ways visitors develop their own experiences, one can suggest new ways in which heritage can be managed and presented.

Of Kiwi Fruit and Kewpie Dolls: The Wonder of Modern Alankara in Bangalore

Of Kiwi Fruit and Kewpie Dolls: The Wonder of Modern Alankara in Bangalore

Tulasi Srinivas
Photo Essays

The daily aesthetic ornamentation of the deity known as alaṅkāra is an everyday feature of temple ritual. This colorful ornamentation, traditionally of flower garlands and fruit offerings, is synchronized to daily and festival calendars, with spectacular alaṅkāra offered during festivals. Alaṅkāra offers the temple priests scope for creativity, yet it is carefully controlled and codified according to liturgical texts, for it is thought to how God is revealed. Speaking to new practices of alaṅkāra in temples in Bangalore through the usage of new materials such as Kiwi fruit and Kewpie dolls the author suggest a new understanding of modernity and Hindu aesthetics, not only expanding devotees’ understandings of divinity, but inviting devotees to feel adbhutha or wonder.

2020 Winter Issue, Color and Material Religion - Editorial

2020 Winter Issue, Color and Material Religion - Editorial

Urmila Mohan and Jessica Hughes
Editorials

Color does not exist independently from the bodies and materials we encounter daily. It represents, refracts, reflects and redirects so that we perceive and make our world in a new light. In many cases, color helps us categorize and structure our world. Our tangible and intangible experiences are embodied in the ideas, aesthetic qualities and properties of colorful matter. And recognizing the contextual uses of color (whether as embodied or representational, real or imaginary) is vital to understanding its influence.

Gǝʿǝz manuscripts in Ethiopia: What a trained outsider can see today

Gǝʿǝz manuscripts in Ethiopia: What a trained outsider can see today

Nafisa Valieva
Peer Reviewed, Photo Essays

Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian countries on the Horn of Africa, remains one of the few places in the world where parchment manuscripts are still produced and allows scholars to historically trace textual transmission. As the technology of mass print production competes with this ancient practice, this photo essay considers how church communities preserve manuscript production and protect its sacred value in liturgical practices.

Cinema as Metaxu

Cinema as Metaxu

Anat Pick
Peer Reviewed

In this article, Simone Weil's notion of the material world as "metaxu," an in-between or bridge between this world (gravity) and the absolute (grace), is positioned within the tradition of cinematic realism to consider how the natural world in film functions as a bridge to the supernatural. In this way, the cinema intertwines ecology and theology in ways that are particularly resonant now, at a time of large scale environmental collapse and the search for new values to support human and other lives.

Gazing to Africa: A Conversation with Art and Ethnology at the Museum

Gazing to Africa: A Conversation with Art and Ethnology at the Museum

Alexandra Antohin
Articles

This short essay explores how museum displays have traditionally shaped static public knowledge about Africa and Africans. Impressions from the spectator’s experience of the exhibit Beyond Compare: Art from the Bode Museum will serve as a springboard to reimagine how art and ethnological collections can dismantle ideologies of cultural domination embedded in these items’ preservation and presentation to the public.

The Fruits of the Loom: Cosmopolitanism Through the Eyes of the Commissioner

The Fruits of the Loom: Cosmopolitanism Through the Eyes of the Commissioner

Morgan Spencer
Articles

The author interrogates the idea of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in Colonial textile trade through the eyes of the object’s commissioner by focusing on four different textiles, from Italy, China, and India. Just after the ‘Age of Discovery’, this time period (16-17th c.) helps us situate depictions of cultural ‘othering’ within a historical lens. These textiles act as embodiments of political power and ‘worldliness’, making them early examples of translocal consciousness.

Buraq and Landscapes: Anchoring Islamic Identities and Images in Works of Modern Indonesian Art

Buraq and Landscapes: Anchoring Islamic Identities and Images in Works of Modern Indonesian Art

Anissa Rahadiningtyas
Peer Reviewed, Articles

As a semi-mythical steed that accompanies the Prophet Muhammad in the isra/mi’raj narrative, the Buraq occupies an important place in Muslim imaginations across the globe including Indonesia. The author explores the works of two Indonesian modern artists, A.D. Pirous (b. 1932) and Haryadi Suadi (1939-2016) to understand how the form and function of Buraq is reimagined according to the genealogy of their artistic practices, as well as their religious and cultural backgrounds.

“If You’re Looking to Radicalize an Archaeologist, Force Them to do Something Traditional:” An Interview with Dr. Jason de León

“If You’re Looking to Radicalize an Archaeologist, Force Them to do Something Traditional:” An Interview with Dr. Jason de León

Lillia McEnaney
Interviews

Led by UCLA anthropologist Jason de León, the Undocumented Migration Project is changing the way we think about the U.S.-Mexico border. Using a fusion of archaeological, ethnographic, visual, museological, and forensic perspectives, the project is fostering conversation and understanding about the human impacts of American immigration policies. Through an exhibition, field school, and ongoing interdisciplinary research, de León and his team are making the tangible, material traces of migration visible.

Not Writing as Not Seeing, Not Recording: Embodied Racism in Indonesia -- Reflections on Fieldwork since 1974

Not Writing as Not Seeing, Not Recording: Embodied Racism in Indonesia -- Reflections on Fieldwork since 1974

Susan Rodgers
Articles

The author, an anthropologist, discusses how she is at last confronting her oversights in publications about Indonesia. In doing so, she is dealing with racialized ideologies and their corrosive, real-world consequences for persons such as Indonesian Chinese individuals. This highly personal essay reminds us that the discursive power of ideas to contest hegemonies relies on basic acts of experiencing, acknowledging and recording.

Deconstructing Essentialism: Translocality as a Conceptual Tool in the Study of Eclectic Material Cultures

Deconstructing Essentialism: Translocality as a Conceptual Tool in the Study of Eclectic Material Cultures

Chunrong Zhao
Articles

This think-piece on the theoretical potential of ‘translocality’ helps counter the colonial legacy of cultural essentialism in the analyses and representation of eclectic material cultures. Based on reflections on ‘transculturality’ and the case study of the images of Vajrapani in Gandharan art, the author concludes that translocality, which respects the agencies of local cultures and the complexity of cultural exchanges, is a more productive, heuristic concept in analyzing and representing diverse material cultures.

2020 Special Issue: Translocality as Connections that Disrupt

2020 Special Issue: Translocality as Connections that Disrupt

Urmila Mohan and Jessica Hughes
Editorials, Special Issues, Issues

This Special Issue explores the theme of translocality as connections that disrupt. The pieces in this issue vary in the degree to which they explicate ‘religion’. Yet, the uniting thread is how they invoke connections, and conceptual and physical flows across borders, both imagined and real. Simultaneously, this issue indicates that flows take place in fields of uneven power relations with (challenges to) hegemonic systems of being and thinking that are regarded as being self-evidently ‘in place’. Translocality, thus, also works against essentializing representations that support or authenticate the virtues and values of dominant religions and cultures.

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