Join Art Historian Catherine Becker to read an enormous picture scroll from Rajasthan that revolves around a semi-divine hero, Pabuji, and his exploits. In great detail, the scroll depicts an epic tale of blood feuds and she-camels. Learn about the Indian performance tradition and the struggles of contemporary storytellers to keep this art alive, and then take a crack at performing a small portion of the tale. Copious quantities of chai will be served to help keep your voices lubricated.
Henry Hall, 106
935 West Harrison Street
This class is appropriate for ages 18 and over, class is limited to 15 people.
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Artist Bio
Catherine Becker is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research and teaching focus is on the art and architecture of South Asia. She investigates how objects, images, and monuments shape our worlds and mediate a range of social interactions. She teachs the arts of Asia broadly, but with special attention to a range of themes and subjects, including the ritual animation of images, visual story-telling practices, colossi, popular religious imagery, and the reuse of objects from the past in the present. Her current book project, Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past: Sculpture from the Buddhist Stupas of Andhra Pradesh, investigates the production and use of Buddhist art in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh from the early centuries of the Common Era to the present. In her second book-length project, she analyzes India’s son-et-lumière shows, which juxtapose the monuments of India’s past with markers of modernity, such as electricity and Bollywood showmanship.
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