Indian Nation as Woman, Mother, Goddess: An Interdisciplinary Catalogue
Rashmi Viswanathan
MOTHERLAND: PUSHPAMALA N.’S WOMAN AND NATION by Edited by Monica Juneja and Sumathi Ramaswamy Roli Books, New Delhi, 2022, 136 pp., INR 1,495.00
October 2024, volume 48, No 10

Motherland, edited by historians Monica Juneja and Sumathi Ramaswamy, is a scholarly catalogue accompaniment to an eponymous exhibition on the work of the Bengaluru-based photo-performance artist, Pushpamala N. The exhibition, curated by the editors, was held at Völkerkundemuseum in Heidelberg (May 28-July 31, 2022). Since the 1990s, Pushpamala has been playfully featuring herself as a protagonist in photographic scenes and tableaux that draw from a rich cultural vocabulary of Indian heroines, goddesses, and vamps. In her capacity to cull from visual anthropology, cinema, popular calendar art, and other mass cultural forms, the artist lends herself to an unusual interdisciplinary treatment in this catalogue. Leading scholars of anthropology, media studies, history, and art history take up the challenge to see her performances through varying methodological frames: including the editors listed above, Chaitanya Sambrani, Arvind Rajagopal, Manuela Ciotti, Karin Zitzewitz, and Sharanya.

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