Book Launch: Buddhist Visual Cultures, Rhetoric, and Narrative in Late Burmese Wall Paintings | SOAS
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2018-06-04

Book Launch: Buddhist Visual Cultures, Rhetoric, and Narrative in Late Burmese Wall Paintings was given by Dr Alexandra Green (The British Museum) at the Centre of South East Asian Studies, SOAS University of London on 9 May 2018. Find out more at https://goo.gl/C9B4UK
Summary
Step into a Burmese temple built between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries and you are surrounded by a riot of color and imagery. The majority of the highly detailed wall paintings displays Buddhist biographical narratives, inspiring the devotees to follow the Buddha’s teachings. Alexandra Green goes one step further to consider the temples and their contents as a whole, arguing that the wall paintings mediate the relationship between the architecture and the main Buddha statues in the temples. This forges a unified space for the devotees to interact with the Buddha and his community, with the aim of transforming the devotees’ current and future lives. These temples were a cohesively articulated and represented Burmese Buddhist world to which the devotees belonged. Green’s visits to more than 160 sites with identifiable subject matter form the basis of this richly illustrated volume, which draws upon art historical, anthropological, and religious studies methodologies to analyze the wall paintings and elucidate the contemporary religious, political, and social concepts that drove the creation of this lively art form.

A presentation by the author will be followed by responses from Dr. Sarah Shaw, Dr. John Clarke and Professor Shane McCausland. The event will be chaired by Professor Ashley Thompson.

The book launch will be followed by a reception in B104.

Author Biography
Alexandra Green is Henry Ginsburg Curator for Southeast Asia at the British Museum, London, UK. HK University Press published her monograph, Buddhist Visual Cultures, Rhetoric, and Narrative, in January 2018. Edited volumes include Burma: Art and Archaeology (British Museum Press, 2002), co-edited with Richard Blurton at the British Museum, Eclectic Collecting: Art from Burma in the Denison Museum (NUS Press, 2008), and Rethinking Visual Narratives from Asia: Intercultural and Comparative Perspectives (HK University Press, 2013). She curated two exhibitions titled Pilgrims, Healers, and Wizards: Buddhism and Religious Practices in Burma and Thailand (2014) and Shadow Puppet Theatre from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand (2016) at the British Museum. Current projects include a history of Southeast Asia based on the British Museum collection, the relationship between word and image in Burmese popular posters, and an exhibition on Sir Stamford Raffles.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies