The Quality of Quantity: Iconic Exhibition Value in India's Monumental Stat

Friday, March 2nd

5 pm, Gallery 400 Lecture Room

400 S. Peoria

Kajri Jain teaches in the Department of Visual Studies and the Graduate Department of Art at the University of Toronto. Her research is on popular image-cultures in India, with a focus on the interface between religion, visual culture and vernacular business cultures. She is the author of Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art (Duke University Press, 2007). Jain’s current project is on gigantic religious statues in post-liberalization India, for which she has received a SSHRC Standard Research Grant. She also teaches and writes on modern and contemporary Indian art. Initially trained as a graphic designer at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, Jain has a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Sydney. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute and the Australian Research Council, and has taught in departments of Art History, Cultural Studies and Film Studies in Australia, the US and Canada. She contributed a section on contemporary Indian religious images to the exhibition Medium Religion (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Nov. 2008-April 2009).