After its successful showing at a Brussels art museum, "The Body in Indian Art", an exhibition that brings together 220 artworks with the aim to explore complex understandings of the human body, will open here March 14.
Curated by Naman P. Ahuja, the exhibition will be mounted at the National Museum from March 14 to June 7 that has artworks from 36 museums, archaeological institutes and private collectors. Some of the artworks will be displayed for the first time.
According to a statement Monday, the exhibition has a variety of artworks to offer, from monumental stone sculptures located in the store-rooms of provincial Indian small-towns, to Chola bronzes from Tanjore, and manuscripts about magic painted for the Mughal Emperor Akbar from the library of the nawabs of Rampur.
"The effort is to see and study how the minds in the subcontinent have viewed and perceived the body in curiously different ways," said Venu V., director general, National Museum.
The show delves into the concepts such as birth, death, rebirth, heroism, asceticism, divinity, rapture and possession of the human body.
The exhibition will trace the journey of the body from the controlling forces of fate to the power of human action, and from desire and seduction to its conquest.
This exhibition was a part of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations most ambitious cultural gala, "Europalia.India", a four-month-long festival in Brussels. It was launched last October.
