From about the 1990s onwards, in tandem with economic liberalization, the monumental iconic statue has become an increasingly prominent feature of the religious and now the political landscape. Focusing on the Statue of Unity– a figure of Sardar Patel intended to be the tallest statue in the world – and its multiple genealogies, this talk attends to what the novelty of this genre makes possible: the neoliberal scale-making project. The talk links locality at varying scales with the national and global, and the speculative sensibility at its heart.
KAJRI JAIN is Associate Professor of Indian Visual Culture and Contemporary Art in the Department of Visual Studies and the Graduate Departments of Art History and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art (Duke, 2007) as well as several articles. Her research focuses on images at the interface between religion, politics, and vernacular business cultures in India. Jain is currently completing a book on the emergence of monumental iconic sculptures in post-liberalization India.