Madhya Pradesh has become the biggest lender of art objects to landmark exhibition at National Museum which is hosting a 11 week mammoth art extravaganza, mounted in an 18,500 sq ft area, in New Delhi. The event would conclude on June 7.
Sporting the brilliance of cosmic symbols, the expansive plaster replica of a stone sculpture of lord Shiva, dating back to 5th-6th century AD, adorns a gallery at the National Museum. In an adjacent gallery, a sandstone sculpture of two flying celestials sparks curiosity for its exquisite grandeur.
The Cosmic Shiva and the Flying Celestials are among the art objects from Madhya Pradesh that feature in an ongoing landmark exhibition, ‘The Body in Indian Art’ (BIA) an eight-gallery aesthetic representation of the body in Indian art spanning four millennia across regions, religions, philosophies and mythologies.While the Shiva statue has been lent by Bhopal State Museum, the Flying Celestials (8th century AD) now finds a place in the National Museum. Madhya Pradesh has lent around two dozen art objects, the largest among the States, for the exhibition that features 365 artifacts, including sculptures, paintings, masks, jewellery and video installations, provided by museums and private collectors from across the country.
The curator of the event Naman Ahuja informed that the body is the bedrock of a civilisation, and there are certain universal questions about sex, birth, death, rebirth and immortality that have different answers. The exhibition is an unorthodox, non-chronological and cyclical trail of Indian history, with the human body as its fulcrum. Interestingly, all the galleries have a thesis and an anti-thesis, like birth versus death, asceticism versus rapture, rebirth versus immortality, sacred versus profane. The event is near-replication of ‘Indomania’, an acclaimed segment of the 15-week Europalia exhibition that concluded in Brussels in January.