Covering over 27 million square miles, flanked and surrounding over 35 countries, contributing to approximately 40% of the world’s coast lines, the Indian Ocean is often referred to as the cradle of globalisation.
And for good reason. For millennia, shifting winds, particularly the monsoons, enabled brisk trade across the ocean. Trade and commerce brought with it the inevitable exchange of cultures and the related ebb and flow, the absorption and assimilation, of art in the form of artefacts, products and crafts. Over the last few decades, scholars including art historians, have begun examining the influence of such visual art that were inspired by the Indian Ocean’s maritime activities.
Emerging Voices in Indian Ocean Art and Culture
Against this backdrop, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) recently hosted a one-day conference titled Emerging Voices in Indian Ocean Art and Culture: Flashtalks from Doha. The event was held at its campus in Education City and was a public event that was part of a week-long seminar titled Indian Ocean Exchanges, held from 15 to 21 May at VCUarts Qatar, a partner university of Qatar Foundation.
The conference sought to lay the groundwork for a durable and tight-knit international research community that is equipped to study, connect and articulate the complex interactions that shaped – and continue to shape art across the Indian Ocean.
The conference was part of a wider project supported by US-based Getty Foundation. Popularly associated with Getty Images, the foundation’s photo library wing is a cultural and philanthropic institution dedicated to the presentation, conservation and interpretation of the world’s artistic legacy. Through the collective and individual work of its constituent programmes – Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation, J Paul Getty Museum, and Getty Research Institute – Getty pursues its mission in Los Angeles and throughout the world, serving the general public and a wide range of professional communities to promote a vital civil society through an understanding of the visual arts.
Dr Nancy Um, Art History Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Inclusion at Harpur College in Binghamton University, is the principal investigator of the project. Um was recently appointed Associate Director for Research and Knowledge Creation at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), where she will oversee the Research and Knowledge Creation division.
According to Um, the grant proposal for the project drew inspiration from her participation at the biennial Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art in 2019.
I realised that we have to look at the Indian Ocean as a connector not as a divider. I was particularly interested in understanding the maritime cultures that connected regions across religion, language, cultural diversities, and national boundaries.
She said that there are many historians interested in the legacy of the European companies, studying the documents of the English and Dutch East India Companies, but there were not many who were interested in the art or the architecture or the material history. She said that the material is vast and tells a very different story from those found in documents and trade records. Heritage and cultural production are a huge part of the story.
Um added that the project will foster international collaboration and connections in this specific field.
The tangible outcome of this programme will not be published but will be in the formation of communities who will support the cause for a longer duration, which is why this meeting in Qatar is so important as it will set the ball rolling and will continue in future transnational connections.
The seminar included scholars from within and outside Qatar and from a diverse range of specialisations such as architecture, archeology, Islamic history, ethnomusicology, and art history, to name a few.
The conference in Doha was the first of three scheduled to take place over a two-year period. Each of the conference locations – Doha, Singapore and Melaka, and Mombasa and the Swahili coast of Kenya – were chosen for their respective past or current links to the theme of the project.
According to Art History Director and Associate Professor of Islamic Art at VCUarts Qatar, Dr Radha Dalal, Doha’s significance in the Arabian Gulf is undeniable. She said that with connections to other ports across the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, Doha presents scholars the opportunity to explore the centrality of oceanic mobility in the development of coastal and inland cultures.
Given the scholarly, pedagogical and visual nature of the project, she said that hosting the conference at VCUarts Qatar provided the participants the perfect institutional base. She said they are thrilled that VCUarts Qatar is positioned once again to be at the centre of these important discourses.
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