In the late 1970s, a distinctive art form emerged in the villages of Doaba, Punjab, as villagers who had moved away began constructing elaborate multi-storey homes of brick or marble, often featuring sculptural watertanks known as “showpieces.” While largely unknown outside India, these homes now dominate certain areas of Punjab. The painted cement-and-rebar embellishments, commissioned individually, take various forms such as planes, animals, and weightlifters, serving to announce and honor a family's connection to the region. This fusion of art, architecture, and daily life transcends conventional design, telling a diasporic story unique to Punjab. Mumbai-based photographer Rajesh Vora documented hundreds of these works across 150 villages over several years. His photographs were exhibited in 2022 at the Surrey Art Gallery in British Columbia, a hub for the Punjabi diaspora. This volume features over 140 of Vora’s photographs alongside texts by various contributors. Rahul Mehrotra explores the evolving conceptions of home expressed through these vernacular forms, while Vora and curator Keith Wallace discuss the origins and journeys of the works. Sajdeep Soomal connects the sculptures to the region's agricultural past and its independence from British rule, and Satwinder Kaur Bains reflects on the complex emotions these images evoke from her migration experience.
Figure 1 Publishing Poradie kníh (chronologicky)


Knowledge Within
- 196 stránok
- 7 hodin čítania
Knowledge Within: Treasures of the Northwest Coast looks into seventeen of the numerous sites in the Pacific Northwest region with major collections of Northwest Coast Indigenous material culture, bringing attention to a wide range of approaches to caring for and exhibiting such treasures. Each chapter is written by one or more people who work or worked in the organization they write about. Each chapter takes a different approach to the invitation to reflect upon their institution: some narrate a history of the institution, some focus on particular pieces in the collection, and some consider the significance of the work currently being done for the present and future. They do more than fill in the gaps and background of an already existing discussion. They show that these are places and moments in a much longer story, still ongoing, with many characters--individuals, institutions, communities, artworks, treasures--on different, although often parallel or intersecting, journeys.