The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya organised a Museum Popular lecture and Documentary Screening of ‘From Earth to Earth: Devotion and Terracotta Offerings in Tamil Nadu’ by French-American photographer, Julie Wayne on Monday at rock-art shelter conference hall. Wayne screened her 35-minute-long documentary ‘From Earth to Earth: Devotion and Terracotta Offerings in Tamil Nadu’ and later, delivered a lecture on Ayyanar cult. Alongside of a successful career as a photographer, from 1999 until 2010, she directed the Parisian gallery Shantala, a showcase for South Indian traditional, ritual and popular art.

Wayne said, “During one of my frequent travels in Tamil Nadu, I discovered a dilapidated shrine dedicated to Ayyanar and got immediately attracted to the unique and visceral beauty of the offerings and the shrine”. My curiosity piqued and that how began a ten-year journey, exploring and discovering both the material and immaterial aspects of this so little-known Ayyanar cult.

Describing the present situation of Ayyanar shrines, she said, “This is probably the last generation of potters, who are making the terracotta idols to be offered at Ayyanar shrines in an annual ceremony. I have visited hundreds of Ayyanar shrines and found that each village has its own pattern of these devotion idols.” She added, “At the ground level, these shrines are on the verge of extinction”. French-American photographer, Julie Wayne has discovered, surveyed and documented more than seventy shrines of Ayyanar, participated in more than fifty festivals and spent countless hours watching and recording the potters and their sacred craft. Her visual and intellectual curiosity piqued, she began what became a ten-year journey, exploring and discovering material and immaterial aspects of this so little-known Ayyanar cult.