This paper examines a cross-cultural transformation in textile arts and the gradual replacement of divine iconography with human figures, particularly under the pressures of colonialism and globalization. Historically, cloth served as a sacred surface, where image and ornament conveyed devotion. Indian Kalamkari painters rendered the Ramayana and Mahabharata as visual scripture, elevating cloth into theology. Warli painting depicted humans as cosmic participants in ritual life, while Chinese embroidery and silk weaving celebrated immortals, dragons, and ancestral power. In these traditions, textiles functioned as visual archives of the divine. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, these practices underwent a profound shift. Under colonial trade, global exchange, and elite patronage, the human form was no longer divine but worldly. European officers, merchants, and aristocrats began to appear where gods once presided. South Indian chintz panels displaced epic battles with scenes of European leisure, while Asian courtly silks privileged emperors and patrons over celestial beings. Ornamentation, once a medium of ritual devotion, became a vehicle of commerce, spectacle, and social hierarchy. Drawing on visual analysis of Kalamkari, chintz, Warli painting, and silk embroidery, this paper argues that the replacement of gods with humans was more than aesthetic change. It reflected deeper negotiations of power and cultural authority, where colonial and political figures appropriated reverence once reserved for the divine. Textiles thus emerge not only as art but as critical archives of cultural transformation, revealing how sacred traditions were reconfigured into secular, commodified forms that continue to shape heritage and identity today.

Authors:
Lasya Aji Silpa, Appalachian State University, United States
Manikya Sai Tejaswini Vallabhajosyula, University of North Texas, United States
Barbara Trippeer, University of North Texas, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Lasya Aji Silpa is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Design, Appalachian State University, NC United States

See this presentation on the full schedule – On Demand Schedule

Bookmark