Miniatures and The West

About

Location: Online via Zoom

Cost: Free

While modern and contemporary South Asian art is often accused of being ‘derivative’ – a narrative that is only now being challenged – little mention is made in academic circles of how South Asian art might have impacted European painting. If this event seeks to fill this gap in historical scholarship, it also aims to highlight that the interaction between British and South Asian art is not a thing of the past: the miniature-inflected work of Cambridge-based Jethro Buck and Elisabeth Deane, who studied under master miniaturists in India, are a case in point.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” (Marcel Proust). 

 The seminar series Imperial Subjects: (Post)colonial conversations between South Asia and Wales is led by British Art Network bursary awardee Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and South Asian art historian Dr Zehra Jumabhoy. This series of seminars has been adapted for delivery online.

South Asia and Wales have had a long liaison, stretching back to the earliest years of Britain's socio-political infiltration of the Subcontinent. And, given Wales' own status within the larger British narrative, the encounters have often been more collaborative (and the two have shared more in common) than the history of Colonialism would lead one to assume. This series of four paired seminars traces some of the historic interactions between South Asia and Wales, while simultaneously forging new ones.

The seminars are paired as Week One and Two and will be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday each week. Delegates may register for one or both weeks.