12 December 2011, at 6:30 pm, Monday India’s popular Islamic art of calendars and posters, depicting images of Mecca, Medina, local Sufi shrines and Quranic calligraphy, has so far been neglected as part of the popular ephemera of street culture. But with the recent and growing interest in documenting and interpreting the popular print culture of India, some scholars like Yousuf Saeed have been collecting and writing about these colourful images of devotion and syncretic culture. Such posters can be seen as symbols of India’s pluralistic culture since their artists, publishers and even users are not necessarily all Muslim. Such images also contain visual elements from other religions which are readily accepted by their users. We invite you to an evening of visual presentations and book reading by Yousuf Saeed from his new book “Muslim Devotional Art in India” (Routledge, New Delhi, 2012). The presentation will be followed by comments and a discussion with audience, conducted by the well-known scholar Patricia Oberoi, who herself has been an avid collector and scholar of India’s popular visual culture. Yousuf Saeed, a Delhi-based independent filmmaker and researcher, is also the director of Tasveer Ghar, a digital archive of India’s popular visual culture. See www.tasveerghar.net For more details about the book, see: www.muslimdevotionalart.in Entry for this event is free. For details about the venue, see http://www.iicdelhi.nic.in India International Centre |
