How do I bring you home? Seeking ancestral relations in Himalayan ‘type’ photography
Friday 21 February 2025, 12pm
Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre
Mridu Thulung Rai (University College London)
How do I bring you home? is an academic-artistic engagement with the L. A. Waddell Collection (c. 1890), currently housed at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. The collection comprises 60 photographs of 30 men and women, categorized as ‘types of natives’ of Nepal, Tibet, and Sikkim. This ongoing project critically reimagines ways of engaging with colonial archives through the lens of my Khambu Rai ontology. At its core is the mundum, our cosmology, which shapes both the methodological approach and theoretical framework. The work includes an imagined visual and oral reconstruction – the visual is a juxtaposition of photographs from personal and found archives, while the oral takes shape as gauff – conversations reflecting my internal oscillations and negotiations with the archive.
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Hilary Term 2025
Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-8)
In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre.
