Nachrichten und Veranstaltungen

Onlie workshop by Prof. Dr. Julia A. B. Hegewald: Following the lecture on Tuesday, we will together aim at finding explanations for the striking approach, which builders of Jaina temples took during the period starting from the fifteenth century onwards, which strongly expressed Islamic design principles and regularly followed Muslim planning rules. Despite this general acceptation of Islamic approaches in art and architecture, the Jainas appear to have been especially open towards adopting Islamic ideas in their temple constructions. We will examine these and other possible explanations and it is likely that it was not simply a single but in most cases a series of reasons which might have led to the creation of this intriguing hybrid style of architecture.

Im Rahmen des BA-Seminars „Kunst?! Architektur, Skulptur, Malerei und mehr aus Tamiḻ Nāṭu“ veranstaltet die Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstge-schichte eine Tagesexkursion zur großen Tamil-Sonderausstellung im Lindenmu-seum Stuttgart. Wir haben vor Ort auch eine 90-minütige Kuratorenführung mit Herrn Dr. Noack gebucht. Mehr Informationen zu der Ausstellung finden Sie im Internet: https://www.lindenmuseum.de/sehen/ausstellungen/von-liebe-und-krieg Wenn Sie an dieser Exkursion teilnehmen möchten, melden Sie sich bitte bei Sandra J. Schlage (Schlage@uni-bonn.de). Sie erhalten in der zweiten Woche des Sommersemesters eine verbindliche Antwort, da wir vorher nicht die Teilneh-merzahl des BA-Kurses kennen.

Slavery in Northern Mozambique, trade dynamics and past interactions in India Ocean: Ilha de Moçambique, 900 AD to 1800: Mozambique’s coast is marked by different cultural horizons that span from hunter-gatherers to the establishment of Bantu farmers and later proceeded by Swahili trade settlements that were interconnected within the Indian Ocean Trade Network. New perspectives from archaeological (terrestrial and maritime), historical and anthropological research are bringing to light a complex body of knowledge about slavery in this section of southern East Africa, which has been based chiefly on Portuguese sources (customs, colonial administration archives, etc.). This exclusion of indigenous and Swahili sources has left gaps relevant to the understanding of this process. It is then critical to look at different sources to better comprehend the complex past slave trade activities and their impacts on Mozambique.

Public lecture by Nathalie Neumann M.A.: Felix Ganz (1869-1944) was a successful businessman from Mainz and managing director of Ludwig Ganz AG, which imported and manufactured oriental carpets and textile products for furniture and home décor. He was also an art collector with an important collection of art objects from the Middle East and East Asia. In 1934, Ludwig Ganz AG was ‘aryanized’. In 1942 he and his second wife Erna were deported to Theresienstadt, where they survived for two years, and were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944. His art collection disappeared with only have a rough description of the items from restitution claims. In 2019 some objects belonging to Felix were discovered in the Landesmuseum in Mainz. Adam Ganz is the great-grandson of Felix Ganz. In autumn 2018 he and Nathalie Neumann successfully applied to the German Lostart Foundation (DZK Magdeburg) to research the fate of the collection in conjunction with the University of Mainz.

"Typological-Stylistic Observations on Early Gandhāran Buddha Images in Stone, c. 1st–3rd Centuries". Online lecture by Dr. Corinna Wessels-Mevissen: I shall present my recently developed model of gradually evolving typological stages of the Buddha image, during late pre-Kushan and Kushan rule, in the region referred to as “Gandhāra”. Particularly, the question of the origin and date of the earliest anthropomorphic representation of the historic Buddha (lived ca. fifth-fourth centuries BCE) has been explored for a long time. However, the extremely intricate factual situation has not allowed to arrive at a widely accepted result yet. I shall explain my arguments for a particular typological-stylistic order of succession, almost exclusively based on features observed on the head portions. One of my new suggestions concerns the possible choice of traits pertaining to the Kushan rulers and their immediate predecessors themselves for designing the Gandhāran Buddha image.

The robbing of temple statues of Koh Ker, the tenth century Angkorian Capital in Cambodia, is a unique crime story, whose investigation is still ongoing. The collaborative work of archaeologists, lawyers and government officials of various countries have revealed an entanglement of art collectors, experts and museums leading to the discovery and return of numerous statues so far. Not being part of this investigtation, the opportunity to attend the arrival of some statues personally in Phnom Penh in 2021 nevertheless inspired me, to design a seminar for the summer semester of 2022 at the University of Bamberg on the debate of disputed objects in Western museums, in which the participants created physical and digital evidence boards on the objects’ history, the people and institutions involved, debating also their legal status. This talk will be an update of my presentation on the Koh Ker statues.

Wir besuchen gemeinsam die Ausstellung „Ambedkar. Blick von Außen“ von Frank Rogge, Olivier Graine und Niteen Gupte, die im Rahmen der Indientage der Deutsch-Indischen Gesellschaft e.V. Köln stattfindet. Die drei Künstler aus Köln positionieren sich mit ihren eigenen künstlerischen Mitteln zu B. R. Ambedkar, der am meisten portraitierten historischen Persönlichkeit im heutigen Indien. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) übte enormen politischen Einfluss als Vorsitzender des indischen Verfassungskomitees aus. Er wurde der erste Justizminister des neugegründeten indischen Staates. Besonders bedeutsam ist seine Rolle als Anführer der ehemals Unberührbaren und seine Beiträge zu der Dalit-Bewegung. Teil des Ausstellungsbesuchs ist ein Gespräch mit den Künstlern. Wenn Sie an dieser Exkursion teilnehmen möchten, melden Sie sich bitte bei Sandra J. Schlage (Schlage@uni-bonn.de). Mehr informationen zur Ausstellung: www.digkoeln.de

Songs of Love and War from Classical Tamil Poetry (2 BCE - 2 CE) through Bharatanatyam: The Sangam anthology contains poems of love and war which dates back to over two millennia. The literature is lesser known due to the linguistic complexity of the poetry. The body of literature brings out the inextricable link of the external landscape which has a direct connection to the internal emotional states. In today’s world, where people are slotted based on several stereotypes of gender, religion and language, Sangam poetry comes as a breath of fresh air since it observes human nature instead of ordering them. Since Bharatanatyam is a versatile language to communicate, the sheer humanness of the poems makes the poetry from over two millennia to have a message which is alive and relevant in today’s context. The aim is to promote the body of literature as not only the pride of Tamils but a treasured contribution of India to world literature, dance and theatre.