Sarmaya - The Museum Without Boundaries

Spotlight

Age of the Empires

The Lure of Lost Kingdoms

The thrill of serendipity, the awakening of the imagination, the inevitability of being devoured heart and soul by a world you didn’t even know existed until this moment. In a way, being a student of history is like being an astronomer. Especially if the subject of study is an ancient or forgotten kingdom. Click to... Read more »

Dive Right In

Categories: Reads

Assam's Mighty Ahom Dynasty

Categories: Reads

Age of Empires – Reading List

Categories: Guides

Hindu Temple Architecture

Categories: Guides

Nagara, Dravidian, Vesara: Temple Styles of India

Categories: Spotlight

“You can’t visit Hampi in a day”

Categories: Exhibitions

Forgotten City of Joy

Categories: Spotlight

The Lure of Lost Kingdoms

Categories: Spotlight

Brick by Brick: The Built Legacies of the Gujarat Sultanate

Categories: Reads

Rock & Ruler: Golconda’s Trail of Diamonds

#SarmayaStars

Wild Things

Created using oil paint and 22 ¾ gold leaf on Gesso panels, Jethro Buck’s painting ‘Wild Things’ borrows and meshes together a potpourri of images from across the global landscape – from pastoral England to Mughal India. This miniature style painting teases a range of dynamic figures – animal and human – who go about... Read more »

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We are thrilled to invite you to a show that stands at the ever-evolving crossroads of the self. Serving as our compass are the works of three luminous artists, Saju Kunhan, Saubiya Chasmawala and Rithika Merchant. Through their art, we investigate the theme of identity as it weaves across genres of Sarmaya’s collection, including photography, numismatics and indigenous and contemporary art.

This exhibition is the first in the series of collaborations between Sarmaya and India’s leading art galleries as an exploration of the relationship between collectors, gallerists and artists.

August 11th – 28th 2021

At TARQ, Dhanraj Mahal
Apollo Bunder, Mumbai

Visit this link to book your appointment - https://tarq.appointlet.com

Sarmaya x TARQ present 'Shifting Selves: Between meaning, mythology and mirage'

YouTube Video VVVXRXluMDU2cjJybHJZM2FJbGZyTUlBLlFVQkJEMkJERjk0

Key to the way worship unfolds in #Hinduism is a physical manifestation of holiness, whether it’s a mound, a raised platform or an enclosed structure. In India, this tradition started with a simple sacrificial altar made of piled bricks or a few perishable materials during the time of the #Vedas. Through the centuries, it was refined into the extraordinary, living, breathing work of art that is the Hindu #temple. Indologist Krishna Deva describes it like this: “(A temple) represents the cosmological symbolism in an aesthetic garb.” The temples of India represent not only the deities they house but also the spirit of the mortal beings who gave them shape. Read more here: https://sarmaya.in/guides/hindu-temple-architecture/

Sarmaya Guide to Hindu Temple Architecture - Glossary

YouTube Video VVVXRXluMDU2cjJybHJZM2FJbGZyTUlBLjZ3UTY4MFlMcnlV

The Jahaz Mahal of #Mandu was rightly named the ‘ship palace’. For in the rainy months of June and July, the 360-foot-long building casts reflections along on the surfaces of the two small brimming lakes, truly give it the appearance of a ship. Mandu was the capital of the Malwa Sultanate, which held power between the 14th and 16th centuries. This beautiful engraving of the Jahaz Mahal was made by J Guiaud based on a sketch by Captain Claudius Harris in 1859.

The engraving is coupled with a doha attributed to #RaniRoopmati, who was married to the Sultan of Malwa, Baz Bahadur.:

Wasted my flesh at love's fire!
Shrunk veins to my ' bin's ' tautened strings!
Yet every hair, like each wire,
With the name of the master still rings.

Visit Mandu through a collaboration between Sarmaya and India Lost & Found: https://bit.ly/ManduCityOfJoy

Doha by Rani Roopmati - Jahaz Mahal, Mandu

YouTube Video VVVXRXluMDU2cjJybHJZM2FJbGZyTUlBLnM4Mk1lSUVRVTE0

Interpreting objects is often a personal process. It comes from a space within, as responses to forms, sounds, visuals, and narratives. Every interpretation is unique, an amalgamation of distinct experiences, memories, thoughts and imaginations.

At Sarmaya, we wanted to reimagine objects in our archive. What happens when we respond to objects instinctively, disconnected from their historical contexts, and form our own meanings? Our imagination takes over and we make rather whimsical associations. Centuries and geographies apart, would the fish-shaped silver Larin coin ever find its way into a Warli fishing net? Would a majestic tiger from Jethro Buck’s miniatures walk casually into Amber Palace? How would a ‘vahan’ from a Mata ni Pachedi textile navigate today’s chaos and traffic using Google Maps?

Reimagine is a series where we make connections across the collection and examine the extent to which our ways of seeing — and an object’s own meaning — are informed by time, space, and context. We time-travel across genres and objects from the Sarmaya collection, building our own dreamy narratives which are rooted in parallel, and sometimes disjoint, histories and cultures.

Discover the ever-growing collection inspiring this series here: http://bit.ly/SarmayaCollection

Reimagine, a Sarmaya series

YouTube Video VVVXRXluMDU2cjJybHJZM2FJbGZyTUlBLmxzajRGRy13aFZN

'Afloat' by Gaurav Ogale

There are some visuals that re-visit you; from a film, a story or fragments of memory. Between these inhibitions and constant longing for hope in objects around us - in porcelain cups, paper boats, echoes of waves lashing onto the empty shores; there lies the story we know, the one we will never share.

This video was created for a Sarmaya virtual exhibition titled 'Portraits of a Pandemic'.

Find more of Gaurav's work here: https://www.instagram.com/patranimacchi/

Portraits of a Pandemic - Gaurav Ogale for Sarmaya

YouTube Video VVVXRXluMDU2cjJybHJZM2FJbGZyTUlBLkgzSXR3WGhETFRv

Mithila artist and author Manisha Jha talks about her life's work preserving and celebrating this art form with Sarmaya founder Paul Abraham.

Sarmaya Salon with #Mithila artist Manisha Jha

YouTube Video VVVXRXluMDU2cjJybHJZM2FJbGZyTUlBLjlzY205Vml5SHFN

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Age of the Empires

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Wild Things

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The Qutub Minar, Delhi

The Asoka Rock, Junagadh

Ceylan (Ceylon)

Hoshang Shah’s Tomb (Jama Masjid), Mandu

Untitled #55 (From Batin)

Untitled #54 (From Batin)

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