3. Displaying People

Fingerprints Episode 3
Mallica Kumbera Landrus, the Ashmolean’s Keeper of Eastern Art, takes us on a journey with 200 clay figures from India, displayed alongside a human zoo at the Colonial and India Exhibition of 1886, and later used to teach young British colonial officers at Oxford’s Indian Institute. Find a transcript of this episode here
Read more

• View images of some of the sculptures mentioned in the episode here
• Find out more about Ali Kazim’s exhibition at the Ashmolean here

Speakers in this episode:

• Series host: Lucie Dawkins, Director & Producer, Ashmolean Museum
• Professor Mallica Kumbera Landrus, Keeper of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean
• Ali Kazim, one of Pakistan’s leading contemporary artists whose work will be on show in the Ashmolean from 7 February 2022
• Dr Nayanika Mathur, Associate Professor in the Anthropology of South Asia, University of Oxford

About the Fingerprints podcast
Every object in the Ashmolean has passed from hand to hand to reach the Museum. In a new podcast, we uncover the invisible fingerprints left behind by makers, looters, archaeologists, soldiers, rulers, curators, and many more. These stories of touch reveal the ways in which the forces of conflict and colonialism have shaped Britain’s oldest Museum. Join the Ashmolean’s curators alongside artists, experts, and community members, for our new podcast: Fingerprints.
Fingerprints will be released on the Ashmolean’s website, on Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts, weekly from 21 January 2022 until 25 February 2022.
Fingerprints is produced and hosted by Lucie Dawkins. Guests include Bénédicte Savoy, co-author of the Report on African Cultural Heritage, commissioned by Emmanuel Macron; Professor Dan Hicks, of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum; and Simukai Chigudu, one of the founding members of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign.
www.ashmolean.org/fingerprints

Support the show