Off the Press: Visualizing Devotion in Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings

The Fowler Museum presents an interdisciplinary conversation celebrating a new publication on Jain devotional textiles from India.
About this Event

The Fowler Museum presents an interdisciplinary conversation celebrating a new publication on Jain devotional textiles from India, presented by curator Syona Puliady. Expanding beyond the original 2022 Fowler exhibition, the program brings together scholars of art history, visual aesthetics, religion, and philosophy to consider the many lives of Jain shrine hangings (chhoda) beyond the gallery space. Through short responses and dialogue, speakers will reflect on the publication’s themes from distinct disciplinary perspectives, exploring how these richly embroidered textiles function not only as devotional objects, but also as works of artistic innovation, repositories of cultural memory, and expressions of lived religious practice.
Centered on extraordinary textiles from the Ronald and Maxine Linde Collection, promised gifts to the Fowler Museum, the conversation will examine the devotional significance, artistic techniques, and social worlds embedded within these shimmering works of velvet and sateen embroidered with gold and silver gilt thread. Featuring visual references to Jain mythology, sacred sites, spiritual teachers, and ritual traditions, the publication and accompanying discussion invite audiences to reconsider the intersections of art, aesthetics, materiality, and spirituality through the lens of Jain textile traditions. The program reflects the Fowler’s ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and scholarship that extends the life of exhibitions through new perspectives and public exchange.
Pawan Jain is a scholar of Art History and a textile entrepreneur. She holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art, with a focus on Jain manuscript painting and textiles, and is the author of several publications, including Kaivalyam: Jain Manuscript Paintings in the National Museum, Chitram Vastram: Textiles and Sartorial Styles in Jain Manuscript Paintings, and Sarasvati: A Jain Perspective through Art. She is currently working on a forthcoming book on the illustrated manuscript Vasanta Vilasa. Jain is the recipient of a MAP Fellowship and a Tagore National Fellowship, through which she is researching illustrated Mahabharata manuscripts at the National Museum. Her curatorial work includes the exhibition Chitram Vastram, and she has lectured widely on Indian art, Jain visual culture, temple architecture, and Western art. She is also co-founder of two textile enterprises focused on printing and weaving, and is a life member of the Crafts Council of India and FICCI FLO.
Venu Mehta is the Bhagwan Chandraprabha Endowed Assistant Professor in Jain Studies and Assistant Professor of Comparative Spiritualities. A scholar of Jainism, her research focuses on the devotional practices, literature, and iconography of the Jain goddess Padmāvatī, as well as Jain diaspora communities, sectarian identity, and bhakti traditions. Her broader interests include Indian religions, South Asian cultural traditions, religious art, and Digital Humanities.
Syona Puliady is curator of textiles of the Eastern Hemisphere at the Fowler. Her research focuses on histories and textiles of the Indian Ocean realm. Her work also takes her to the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where she collaborates with artists and garment laborers who weave their identities into the Tamil landscape of visual, sensory, and performing arts.
Aparna Sharma is Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA, as well as a documentary filmmaker and scholar. Her work explores visual culture, aesthetics, performance, memory, and the politics of representation through interdisciplinary approaches to film and media. In this conversation, she will reflect on the publication through the lens of art, visuality, and aesthetics.