Articles Published by Shriya Sridharan
Shriya Sridharan (Art and Art History) published two papers in 2023. The first is an article titled "Women in Hindu Temple Art: Their Auspicious Presence and Unmarked Absence" in the Religion and the Arts journal. This article focuses on kolam-making, the only art/ritual practice that women are associated with in the traditional or Agamic temples of South India even today. It locates the absence of women as contemporary temple art practitioners in the intersection of the meanings of being female and the meanings of temple architectural forms and spaces. The second publication is a chapter titled, "Negotiating the ‘Living’ with the Historical: Teaching the Two Views of the Hindu Temple" in the book Teaching South and Southeast Asian Art: Multiethnicity, Cross-Racial Interaction, and Nationalism. This chapter points out the different perspectives of historians and worshippers in the viewing and conservation of Hindu temples, highlighting the need to incorporate them both in the teaching of Hindu art and architecture. In addition to showing how these two perspectives are taught in the classroom, this chapter traces how different meanings and valuations of Hindu temples as antiquities, as homes for living gods, as material evidences and so on, are negotiated in practice through spatial demarcations and selective renovations.