Venkatesan – Cages and Solids
Cages and solids: a theory of materiality and aliveness.
Soumhya Venkatesan, University of Manchester
ABSTRACT:How do objects come to matter, and how and when can this become a problem? Based on research among ritual sculptors and priests in Hindu south India, this paper will focus on the processes by which a deity is detached from an image that, until the detachment, has been worshipped as the deity. I will ask how the embodied deity allows adepts to focus on detachment from worldly ties and, conversely, how the ‘emptied image’ becomes a focus of attachment.
