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Dear All,

The Department of Visual Arts is delighted to invite you to the first colloquium in the Visual Arts Colloquium Series, Spring 2026.

Title: "Nature’s Duplicates: Inorganic doubles of organic "nature" in public space in contemporary India"

Speaker: Professor Kajri Jain, Art Historian, University of Toronto

Date: Monday, 9th February, 2026

Time: 1: 30 PM

Venue: Visual Art Studio (near sports block)

Abstract: This paper describes her current work in progress on the proliferating inorganic doubles of organic “nature” in public space in contemporary India: their layered genealogies, and the resonances and interferences between their logics of signification. It is easy to see phenomena like plastic grass, fibreglass deer, concrete parrots, robotic elephants, and aluminium trees as developmental greenwashing but She proposes that they are not entirely, or always, reducible to this. How might their embodiment of specific cosmopolitics, aesthetics, representational regimes, and moral-ethical values depart from, provincialize, and/or reinforce the (putatively) secular post-Enlightenment conceptions of nature that inform much global environmentalism and environmental humanities scholarship? And what, therefore, might they tell us about the obstacles to and opportunities for justice, environmental and otherwise?

Bio: Professor Kajri Jain is a Art Historian in the University of Toronto. Professor Jain's research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary South Asian visual cultures, with an emphasis on postcolonial and decolonizing approaches to art history, aesthetics, and politics. She works on image-cultures in modern India, particularly at the intersections of religion, media, and visual practice, and is interested in questions of art historiography and temporality. Her broader interests include conceptions and representations of “nature” in South Asia and how images shape cultural, ethical, and political meanings.

The conversations will continue over tea/coffee after the talk. 

See you there!

Warm regards,

VIsual Arts Department