A radical philosophy that transformed the religious, cultural, and political landscape of India and beyond is explored in a landmark new exhibition at the British Museum. Tantra’s triumphant feminine power at the British Museum The influential Indian spiritual tradition is celebrated in an exhibition touching on life, sex and death It is the very first time the British Museum – which houses one of the biggest and most comprehensive collections of Tantric material in the world – will explore this subject in an exhibition. The British Museum takes us into the world of Tantra in a fascinating blockbuster exhibition that’s filled with stunning artefacts — though there's still plenty of sex. Tantra: enlightenment to revolution. Siva is shown here in one painting as part male and female for example. 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Supported by the Bagri Foundation, Tantra: enlightenment to revolution (April 23 to July 26, 2020) will chart the rise and spread of Tantra, a set of beliefs and rituals that first emerged in India around AD 500. Very … Curated by Imma Ramos. The British Museum has reopened with a very interesting exhibition about Tantra. Please review and manage your cookie settings. The 1974 painting evokes the Bindu chakra, the underlying seed of creation. Rawson, Philip. Tiny manuscript images are kept to a minimum. Review of The British Museum. Visitors cluster around objects with the highest Victorian shock-value – like a Tantric temple frieze sculpture carved of stone, with the dynamic, arched form of a woman receiving oral sex (an actual example of yoni puja). To find out more, click here. It’s derived from the sacred instructional texts, the Tantras, which offer insight into certain anti-establishment, transgressive rituals that – when carried out correctly, and with guidance from a guru – can grant access to this power, manifested both temporally and supernaturally, like longevity and spiritual enlightenment. It reflects what another Indian woman artist has asserted: ’woman-hatred is entrenched in the…framework of most societies and pervades most cultures to the point of being celebrated’ [Jagit Chuhan in ‘Beyond Frontiers’ eds Ghosh and Lamba, Saffron 2001]. 2011. Buy. One of the many achievements of exhibition, book and online resources is to acknowledge the controversy around Tantra but to move rapidly on and concentrate on what is a highly demanding task – presenting a phenomenon which has so many particularly western layers of prejudice, over excitement and ignorance to unpeel. British Museum exhibition review: Tantra enlightenment to revolution 24 Sep 2020 – 24 Jan 2021 Activities Great Indoors Published on Monday, 12 October 2020 10:27 Last Updated on 13 October 2020 Monica Costa 0 Comments. London: Bloomsbury. As a wholly independent publication, we rely entirely on our ad bookings to keep The Quietus going. Tantra’s triumphant feminine power at the British Museum The influential Indian spiritual tradition is celebrated in an exhibition touching on life, sex and death Explore the radical force that transformed the religious, cultural and political landscape of India and beyond in this landmark exhibition. Imma Ramos sits in the middle: she talks rather of right hand [symbolic] and left hand [literal] interpretations and comments that the literal and the symbolic co-exist and the tensions between them make Tantra unique [Ramos 2020: 273]’One cannot attain liberation by means of soothing and pleasing antidotes’ we are sternly informed by a Tantric text [ibid: 165] and Ramos observes that ‘It is clear that sexual rites were also performed literally’ in certain contexts [ibid: 145]. Date of experience: October 2020. At the more figural end, paintings by the Kashmiri artist Ghulam Rasool Santosh embody the union of Shiva and Shakti, combining the transcendental nature of Tantric sexuality with a geometric reduction of form. ... ©The Trustees of the British Museum. DHA have recently completed work on the British Museum’s latest exhibition – Tantra: enlightenment to revolution. This is the kind of exhibition the BM can do almost entirely from its own collections and those of     the British Library, but there are some exciting loans here also. Dimensions: 2450mm x 2220mm. Tickets cost £15 and booking ahead is recommended. Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, a new exhibition at the British Museum that runs through 24 January 2021, attempts to add nuance and context to Tantra’s Western interpretation through an impressive array of aesthetic and devotional objects spanning over a millennia. You can see the appeal. The ego needs to be trampled underfoot. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London 1999-2003 and at the Royal Academy Schools London 2004-06. Political leaders who drew upon Tantra were attracted to its twofold promise of material and spiritual wealth. Tantra: enlightenment to revolution review — sacred sex, subversion and, phew, no sign of Sting British Museum. British Museum has announced new exhibition 'Tantra: enlightenment to revolution'! An early ‘Tantra’ from Nepal. A Tantra exhibition is set to open at the British Museum and promises to 'be about more than just sex and yoga.' Reclaiming the body from shameful associations is a worthy endeavour, and the urgency of environmental and anti-capitalist activism of course should not be denied. Reviewed 4 weeks ago . A … But the exhibition’s underlying promotion of Tantra’s contemporary promise betrays a circular irony, fraught with its premise of redressing the philosophy’s twentieth-century orientalist misunderstanding. Tantric culture and tradition are as alive as ever today, as the comprehensive and exhaustive exhibition at the British Museum shows. The British Museum takes us into the world of Tantra in a fascinating blockbuster exhibition that’s filled with stunning artefacts — though there's … The British Museum’s tantra exhibition. Tantra: enlightenment to revolution runs 23 April-26 July 2020 at The British Museum. Hands raised, she carries a flower and flag print of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes, homaging a sparse lineage of female artists. Doniger, Wendy.2009. ... About halfway round the British Museum’s new exhibition is an object that makes me feel very weedy indeed. Created as a ‘space to sit and read and be,’ library of exile is an installation by British artist and writer, Edmund de Waal. The British Museum: fantastic - See 72,633 traveler reviews, 37,869 candid photos, and great deals for London, UK, at Tripadvisor. It ranges from stone friezes of Durga slaughtering the buffalo demon Mahisha, thought to provide rulers with similar battlefield success, to more modern works, like Sutapa Biswas’s Housewives with Steak-Knives, a 1985 painting of a goddess Kali dressed in a printed tunic, her body unconventionally naturalistic. She’s upside down, legs in the air, so he can devote himself to tonguing her […] This is my exhibition review of Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, at the British Museum. The paintings they create range from anatomically dubious to absurdist, and the whole charade inserts a dose of exoticism into the culture of individualist self-love off which neoliberal capitalism profits, and for which scripted “reality” television acts as an aperture. The Bagri Foundation is pleased to be lead supporter of Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, an exhibition which explores the wider, lesser-known philosophies of this belief system and its impact throughout history. British Museum, LondonEmbraced by the 60s counterculture including the Rolling Stones, the ancient spiritual philosophy of Tantra finds enlightenment not just in sex but death On a stone relief from 11th-century India, a moustached man is enthusiastically pleasuring his lover. The Hindus: an alternative history. Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, a new exhibition at the British Museum that runs through 24 January 2021, attempts to add nuance and context to Tantra’s Western interpretation through an impressive array of aesthetic and devotional objects spanning over a millennia. The novelist and activist Arundhati Roy explores many tantric themes in her novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 2017] much of which takes place in a graveyard. by alixgeddes 15th Oct 2020 14th Oct 2020. ‘Housewives with steak knives’ by Sutapa Biswas is an astonishing image from Bradford of a multi armed young Indian woman on the warpath with white haired head dangling from one hand, steak knife brandished aloft, and intriguingly in another hand a postcard sized image that turns out   to be by Artemisia Gentileschi who famously showed graphic violence to men, having herself suffered at their hands. The aesthetics of Tantra mirror this celebration of the flesh. Good to see that the British Museum has reopened after the Covid19 lockdown. © Sutapa Biswas. Thus, attain enlightenment by applying oneself most diligently to the activity of erotic play. Ask Sian248 about The British Museum. Tantra set out to shock and to offend the prudish, the powerful and conservative, and continues to do so. The exhibition -- Tantra: enlightenment to revolution -- is scheduled to take place at the British Museum from September 24, 2020, till January 24, 2021. If you are looking for insights into Sting and Tom Hanks’ favourite love practice you’ll be disappointed because this is more a showcase of the ancient philosophy behind the contemporary practical spin. The British Museum's major exploration of Tantric art and iconography hovers uncomfortably between aesthetics and exoticism, finds Nicole-Ann Lobo, Sutapa Biswas, Housewives with Steak-Knives, 1985. What she calls ‘softcore’ is the disapproving official view in India today- that it’s all symbolic. [Rawson 1973, 1973a] In the ground breaking exhibition at the Hayward Gallery ‘In the Image of Man’ in 1982 however Tantra doesn’t figure at all as such although many objects relate to it. The exhibition draws connections with Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism that possesses similar concepts of self-obliteration through ishq, or divine, fervent love. It … The last two exhibits would give a Victorian archdeacon in Calcutta serious palpitations and one wonders how his wife might have reacted to such ferocious images of female power. You need to pre book a ticket-easy as website works smoothly Take care to arrive at the allocated time- then entry is smooth and easy. Change ), Religion and Collections is dedicated to the care and interpretation of religious collections – in museums, places of worship, faith organisations, schools and elsewhere. British Museum announces new tantra exhibition after five years of research and insists it will be about more than yoga and marathon seven-hour sex sessions Tantra exhibition at the British Museum focuses on themes including well-being It explores female power, gender fluidity, religious pluralism and mindfulness Tantra: Enlightenment To Revolution opens after 5 years of […] Chamunda dancing on a corpse, Madhya Pradesh, Central India, 800s. There are also court paintings of couples having sex, adorned with jewelry and headdresses on lavish furniture, set against backdrops of rolling, verdant green hills and white-carved buildings. Thus, attain enlightenment by applying oneself most diligently to the activity of erotic play. Ever since Sting boasted that he could go for “four or five hours” by practising tantric sex, the Indian philosophy has been linked with amorous pop stars.The British Museum gave the musician a The sensational subtitle of the last big Tantra exhibition, at the Hayward Gallery in 1971, gives a flavour of what I mean: “The Indian Cult of Ecstasy”. Tantra exhibition review: An enjoyable journey on the road to enlightenment ... New British Museum exhibition to show Tantra is about more than sex. 1982. The iconography of Hindu goddesses makes these political connections explicit and is featured prominently throughout the show. As a worldview, philosophy and set of practices, Tantra is as alive as ever. The show explores ‘the radical force that transformed the religious, cultural and political landscape of India and beyond’. There are several prints by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, a multimedia outfit that created sexual imagery drawing from Tibetan Buddhist yab-yum symbology in service of psychedelic sublimation. This isn’t just erotic art – it’s a religious masterpiece. The British Museum, London: Hours, Address, The British Museum Reviews: 4.5/5. Carrellas, Barbara .2017. The women delight in the gimmick, giggling while struggling to pronounce ‘yoni puja’ (it’s not particularly non-phonetic). ( Log Out /  It’s especially rewarding to see many familiar pieces from the BM’s Hotung Gallery displays retagged and juxtaposed here. The underlying seed of creation / Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account inside it impossible! They have dedicated a small space to some fascinating artefacts of historical Tantra and related sects at length. London 1999-2003 and at the British Museum ’ s new exhibition is an object that makes feel. 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