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In one of the epic tales from Hindu mythology, the blue-skinned god Lord Krishna held up Mount Govadharan for seven days with his pinky finger, allowing the villagers to shelter underneath. It was then that the rain god, Indra, realised that Krishna was an avatar of the all-powerful Lord Vishnu, and bowed down before him in repentance.
Vishnu is regarded as the preserver and protector of the universe, charged with its care and maintenance, and with restoring peace and justice. This story of protecting the villagers from the driving rain, illustrates this role. The tale is captured in stone in a sixth-century statue from Cambodia showing Krishna holding up the mountain, that will soon be on display in Sydney.
Avatar: Forms of Vishnu, opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales this month, brings together ancient sculptures, textiles, paintings, photography and installation, all depicting Vishnu in some form. It features works by major Australian and Indian artists including Gitanjali Das, Jumaadi, Desmond Lazaro, Nalini Malani, Pushpamala N and Sumakshi Singh.
In Hinduism’s pantheon of gods, Vishnu is one of the trinity, or Hindu Trimurti, alongside Brahma and Shiva. Instantly recognisable for his blue-tinged skin and tall stature, he has four arms and hands holding a conch, a mace, a chakra and a lotus flower. He is often shown resting on a serpent coiled on the cosmic ocean, and there is often a lotus coming out of his navel.
Vishnu has numerous avatars, or different forms, that he takes to appear on earth. There are different beliefs to how many there are: as many as 76, although usually the number is most often believed to be 10, and that is how many are present in the exhibition. Far from digital avatars or the well-known movie, the word “avatar” comes from Sanskrit and translates to “coming down”, a reference to the fact the deity descends to earth in one of these forms, as and when needed.
“I wanted to introduce people gently. Who is Vishnu? What is an avatar? What are some of the avatars? So the exhibition is a way of introducing the information in layers,” says co-curator Melanie Eastburn, the gallery’s senior curator, Asian art.
Eastburn first conceptualised the exhibition more than a decade ago, after working in Cambodia and seeing the ancient artworks depicting Vishnu. “I was trying to understand who’s who, how they fit together, and working on connecting, finding the poems and stories, looking at the similarities and differences in the Indian and the Khmer versions,” she says.
Eventually, she brought in Chaitanya Sambrani, an academic from the Australian National University, as a collaborator, and the pair started work on assembling the pieces, collected from 12 institutions around Australia and internationally, including the British Museum, Museum Rietberg, Zurich, and the National Museums of India and Cambodia.
“It’s really important to highlight the plurality of Indian tradition,” says Sambrani. “It’s not a single story, we are a civilisation built on many books, and many concepts of the divine.” Sambrani grew up in a Vishnu-worshipping family in India, and has a deep knowledge of the complexity of the intersection of devotion and art.
“To me, the mythological is especially significant because it has a relationship with who we are and what we do. It’s only powerful and resonant because of what people living today make of it.”
Devotion is woven into daily life in India, whatever the faith. For Hindus, each home has a small shrine with idols of the household’s particular chosen gods. While there are many, many deities, it can be broadly simplified that people tend to choose one of four denominations: worshipping either Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti (the feminine gods) or a combination.
Hinduism spread across to south-east Asia from around 200 CE, mostly with traders and scholars. It took root in a number of spots, including what is now Cambodia, where Vishnu was embraced. Angkor Wat, built 900 years ago, was originally dedicated to Vishnu, although shifted to Buddhism as Hinduism waned in popularity.
An animated sequence marks the entrance point to the exhibition – housed in Naala Badu (“seeing water”), the art gallery’s new wing – with a large-scale video work showing what appear to be floating waves, created by Sydney-based digital storytelling agency Story First Technology Second (S1T2). “We wanted to mark the transition between the world out there, and this one, to mark the threshold and prepare the mind,” says Sambrani.
Inside, gallery walls are painted deep blue, a reference to Vishnu’s skin colour, and marigold, the colour most associated with Hinduism.
The first room holds a collection of ancient sculptures depicting Vishnu, often in his celestial form, his four arms outstretched. One shows the god in repose, resting on a thousand-headed serpent on the cosmic ocean. On loan from Cambodia’s Battambang Provincial Museum, it dates back to the late sixth or early seventh century. In the room beyond, another sculpture shows each avatar’s female version and their vehicle of choice, including a peacock. This one comes from the 13th-century Hoysala Dynasty of Karnataka, in southern India.
Many pieces depict Vishnu in one of his 10 avatars. These start with Matsya, or the fish, who appeared during a great flood. Next is Kurma, the tortoise, Varaha the boar, and Narasimha, the man-lion. Then there is Vamana, or the dwarf, who grew to the size of a giant to claim the universe, and Parashurama, the axe-wielder. Next comes Lord Rama, the hero of the epic Ramayana, Lord Krishna, the blue-skinned flute-playing lover of milkmaids, then the Buddha, who is revered in Buddhism. The tenth and final avatar is Kalki, who is yet to arrive.
“His appearance – galloping on a white horse, holding a flaming sword – spells the end of the world. So when he comes, he will actually end this realm of injustice within which we live, called Kali Yug, or the Age of Kali, and make way for the re-establishment of truth,” explains Sambrani.
Is this something that might not be all bad? I wonder aloud. Sambrani shakes his head gravely. “We don’t want to see that because it will be cataclysmic. It will mean the end of everything we know. But also, this sense of restorative justice is integral to the avatar reservation.”
Vishnu as protector, Kalki as destroyer. One of the works depicts this in detail, a small Mughal-style artwork that is part of a series on loan from the British Museum.
One of just two commissions from contemporary artists for the exhibition is by British artist Desmond Lazaro, who now lives in country Victoria. He provided two large paintings, one depicting the famous myth of the churning of the ocean, a foundational story in Hinduism.
“It was essentially a holy tug of war, with the gods on one side and the demons on the other,” the artist says. “In the middle was Mount Mandara, which is the axis of the world.”
When the two sides started to tug, using a serpent as a rope, the mountain started to sink, so Vishnu appeared in the form of Kurma, or giant tortoise, to support it.
“It’s a seminal creation myth, just like creation myths in other faiths. It’s about finding balance,” says Lazaro. Still more happens and Lazaro’s painting, called Samudra Manthana, Churning of the Ocean of Milk shows a lot of that detail. The commission came about after Sambrani and Eastburn searched for artworks depicting the churning tale but came up empty-handed.
The other commissioned artist is New Delhi-based Sumakshi Singh, whose work is currently on display inside the Indian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. That installation is a recreation of her grandparents’ now demolished Delhi home, rendered in 3D embroidered thread: walls, doors, windows, a circular staircase, all recreated at scale in cobweb-like skeins.
Singh’s Vishnu piece is similarly created from thread, this time recreating a doorway that references another key story in Hindu mythology, that of the killing of an evil demon at the hands of Narasimha, the man-lion avatar. As the myth goes, the act happens at twilight at the threshold of a building, neatly sidestepping the demon’s shield of protection.
“I found myself drawn to the story of the avatar of Narasimha because of how he’s this liminal being, he’s neither this nor that,” says Singh. “He’s neither inside nor outside, it’s neither day nor night, it’s in the twilight. I love these little loopholes in our mythology.”
A particularly memorable sculpture is a horse-headed man, from seventh-century Cambodia. “Something we wanted to put across through the show is that the stories and images appear in many different places over a really long period of time, and they’re all recognisable in their own ways, but they’re all very stylistically different as well,” says Eastburn.
An unavoidable element of this exhibition is provenance, the history of ownership and location of a particular artwork, tracing its journey through hands. Understandably, many pieces have gaps in their records. For an exhibition like this one, provenance is of particular importance, given the unedifying recent history of unscrupulous antique dealers carving priceless antiques out of temples and selling them to collectors or galleries.
Eastburn is a specialist in provenance, and emphasises just how important it is to operate within the rules. “You have to be an approved lender, you have to have all your due diligence policies, have your documentation in order, to be an approved borrower.”
Failure to comply, or exhibiting a piece with a murky backstory, could disrupt long-cultivated relationships with other galleries, and a loss of reputation, so enormous care is taken.
“Some of these works have never left their countries before,” says Eastburn. “This is a really rare opportunity to see this material this way, together.”
Avatar: Forms of Vishnu is on at the AGNSW from June 20-October 5.
Desmond Lazaro and Sumakshi Singh will be in conversation with Megha Kapoor on Saturday, June 20, at 10.30am. Other events commemorating the exhibition opening this weekend include an exploration of the Ramayana with Sunil Badami, and a yoga session. Details here: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/avatar/
