The Jugaad Project

May 8

May 8 Caring for the Body and Spirit of Altars: An Ethical Exploration

As spaces of cultural heritage preservation and education, museums are responsible for respecting the communities whose objects live within their collection, as well as the belief systems within which these objects were/are created and used. In the context of heritage approaches to ‘living collections’ there is a whole subset of objects in museum collections that have spiritual power and/or require traditional, sacred, and religious care. This care and what it involves can only be determined through community consultation, from handling, housing, and orientation to ritual use and access. This article attempts to spark further exploration of traditional, spiritual, and religious care within museums, focusing on the example of altars.

May 8

May 8 2023 Spring Editorial: What Matters in Museums and Cultural Heritage?

Emily Levick and Urmila Mohan

Editorials

This issue turns to Museums as sites for heritage with new approaches to questions of decolonization, community engagement, and the display and interpretation of often sensitive media and narratives. Aspects discussed include ensuring the correct practices of care and conservation of sacred, “living” objects; furthering the decolonizing and Indigenizing efforts of museums; including contemporary Islamic communities in the interpretation and appreciation of ancient coins; and the joint efforts of curators and collectors to create fresh and stimulating exhibitions. In addition, this issue covers heritage-focused activism and iconoclasm.

Sep 30

Sep 30 Interview with Sedekah Benih – Urban Ecology and Community-based Art Activism

Anissa Rahadiningtyas

Interviews

Sedekah Benih is a collaborative and urban environmental practice initiated by an urban farming activist, Dian Nurdiana (Mang Dian), and artist Vincent Rumahloine in 2020 in one of the dense urban neighborhoods in Cibogo, Bandung, West Java. It aims to share and exchange knowledge of urban farming more widely and build a community of “tiis leungen” (Sundanese for “cold arms”), a term comparable to the English “green thumbs”. Drawn from a localized Arabic word and concept of صدقة (sadaqah), which means “righteousness” and refers to the giving of charity, Sedekah Benih aims to share seeds of everyday staple plants that can be grown in dense community spaces and used for local and domestic needs. It encourage collaborators to share the seeds of plants they received with others from their communities, growing connected communities.

Sep 10

Sep 10 Activating the Value of Handmade: The Role of Social Enterprises in Transforming India’s Artisan Economy

Priya Krishnamoorthy and Aparna Subramanyam

Interviews

Urmila Mohan interviews Priya Krishnamoorthy, Founder and CEO of 200 Million Artisans, and Aparna Subramanyam, Partner at 200 Million Artisans, an ecosystem enabler reimagining the potential of India’s artisan economy. 200 Million Artisans is a social enterprise catalysing self-reliance and responsible innovation in India’s artisan economy by providing access to knowledge, resources, and networks that empower artisan-producers and impact entrepreneurs.

Sep 3

Sep 3 Timur Merah Project: A Pilgrimage of Narrative, Memory, and Historical Legacy

Citra Sasmita

Balinese artist Citra Sasmita writes about her ongoing project “Timur Merah” and its interest in probing the important role of women in the Indonesian literary and artistic canon. She maps stereotypical depictions of women in canonic texts, and in a counter reading of women as leaders and resistors, emphasises heroes such as I Dewa Istri Kanya, Queen of the 19th c. Klungkung kingdom. In the second half of the essay, Sasmita tracks the effects of the indigenous male gaze on women, art and the island of Bali, as it transforms into the Dutch colonial gaze, determining what is “authenticity” and privileging what/who should be deemed valuable in shaping Balinese artistic heritage.

Aug 19

Aug 19 A Drawing Out: Visibilizing the Labor of Care, Enacting Mutual Aid

Angela Beallor

Articles

The author explores the proposals and policies for radical caretaking labor reform drafted by Soviet theorist and policymaker Aleksandra Kollontai during the Soviet 1920s. She meditates on the potential of depiction and enaction in artistic production and collaborative performance. This is to help pre-figure mutual aid, collaboration, community organization, and caretaking in the current world as we struggle to upend the current capitalist and patriarchal status quo(s). She draws on her collaborative performance project, A Drawing Out :: Lactic Orchestration, first staged in 2018, as well as the ideas of those, such as Angela Garbes, who have made compelling intersectional calls for valuing the essential labor of care work within the context of the current global pandemic.

Aug 12

Aug 12 The Artivism of Incantations in Isan

Peera Songkünnatham

Articles, Issues

Artivism is not necessarily a harmonious intersection between art and activism—it may also result from a head-on collision. This article explores the art of Patiwat “Molam Bank” Saraiyaem, a Thai folk poet-singer and former student activist who has shied away from the label “activist.” How does one soldier on doing activism with a wounded soul? My answer: through the power of ritual poetry and performance in restoring wholeness as well as acknowledging brokenness. This argument is constructed through description, comparison, and analysis of the words, the emoting, and the reception in two incantatory poems by Patiwat. Isan, the term meaning the Northeast as well as the hybrid Lao vernacular of the region, unlocks an understanding of how Patiwat’s art both serves Thai pro-democracy activism and resists its dominant language and emotional regimen, sparking new activist possibilities in and beyond Isan.

Aug 1

Aug 1 Just Images

Rajgopal Saikumar

Articles

In 2010 a High Court in India found Shabnam and Saleem guilty of conspiring and murdering seven of Shabnam’s family members. They are both currently in death row. If executed, Shabnam will be the first woman to be so killed in independent India. In the decade she’s spent in prison, Shabnam learnt to knit, stitch, and embroider textiles as clothing and bags. Her lawyers documented and presented images of these objects as evidence of reform and a promise of rehabilitation. I am interested in taking the materiality of these objects seriously, and treat them as aesthetic objects. What happens when these photographs enter a legal plea, as evidence of reformation, and a prayer for the commutation of sentence?

Aug 1

Aug 1 2022 Fall Editorial: What Matters in “Material Activism”?

Urmila Mohan

Editorials

Our Fall 2022 issue is on practices geared towards “activating” selves and others. Being socially active invokes power as something that is enacted or accomplished not only on an individual basis but via convincing/persuading others to act too—we see this in the language of “shifting” people towards “justice” and “solidarity”. The common thread that runs through this issue is the role of bodies with all of their entities (emotions, senses, actions, beliefs). Following the agency and efficacy of materials and bodies draws our attention to often overlooked practices. From the closeness of a mother’s care-work for her child to the democratic potential of new rituals.

Simashree Bora and Urmila Mohan

Editorials

How are craft production, techniques and skills interwoven into the space of the “everyday” as culture and identity in South and Southeast Asia? How are different understandings of tradition and indigeneity to be incorporated into such a discussion? Our Spring 2022 issue on Craft explores those questions via communities and cultures in India and Indonesia, featuring peoples’ cosmologies and beliefs in different ways. Lira Anindita Utami’s article on gringsing, a sacred double-ikat textile of Bali, and Debapriya Chakrabarti’s article on the infrastructural impact of Durga Puja idol-making in Kolkata deal with more explicitly religious objects. Lalita Waldia’s article on the woodcarving craft of likhai in Uttarakhand, India, and Amira Rahardiani’s study of bamboo weaving development in Central Java, Indonesia, delve, instead, into the complexities of craft as livelihood and heritage.