Fifteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

In India, importance is indicated by embellishment. One shows reverence to a deity in a temple by covering it in flowers and fruits, often to the point that it becomes obscured and no longer visible. Drivers embellish their auto-rickshaws and trucks with custom-painted motifs and patterned upholstery. Negative space on signage is an opportunity to add images of what its shop contains. In the art museum, contrastingly, artworks’ significance is marked by visual isolation – a single piece should appear in one’s field of vision, on a “neutral” white backdrop. This is, of course, the paradigm of the “white cube,” which became the dominant mode of presenting artworks deemed important in Europe and the United States starting in the mid-20th century. This paper examines Indian aesthetic concepts, such as rasa, the emotion a work of art invokes in its viewer, reader, or listener, to highlight the signification of the crowded visual field. The minimalist backdrop to the work of art in the Indian context is then arbitrary, and a marker of colonial trajectories that resonate differently for audiences in India. This disconnect in the trappings of reverence can be a metaphor for cultural miscommunications with the non-verbal elements of the museum space itself.