Sacred Trees of India: Adornment and Adoration as an Alternative to the Commodification of Nature
Deforestation poses a fundamental threat to ecological sustainability and to the continuation of life on earth.
Investigating the role of perception to environmental protection, this book draws on 10 years of fieldwork in India, documenting sacred trees and groves, and showing that contemporary Indian tree-worship presents a powerful alternative to the Western capitalist commodification of nature that has contributed to the current ecological crisis. Featuring hundreds of original photographs from Hindu, Adivasi, Buddhist and Muslim sacred sites, this study reveals a culture whose reverence for trees has helped to prevent their destruction.
The book will appeal to environmentalists, aesthetes, scholars of religion and ecology, and people interested in the continued connection between spiritual practice and the natural environment.
Buy a copy from cambridgescholars.com
Chapter Ten
Tree Veneration: How Ancient Traditions can Lead to Pro-Environmental Behaviour
Book Chapter in ‘Using the Visual and Performing Arts to Encourage Pro-Environmental Behaviour’. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, England. ISBN: 1-5275-5715-4. ISBN13: 978-1-5275-5715-4. Release Date: 12th October 2020
In 2003, I made my first field trip to India to research sacred trees and tree groves and continued to do so over the following ten years. Initially attracted to the enchanting beauty of these trees, I became committed to their study after learning that the veneration of the tree has the ability to protect trees from logging (Fowler-Smith, 2018: 262). In Hindu cultures, tree veneration through adornment demarcates the tree as set apart and special, inviting people to place further decorative items as offerings and glorifications to the gods. This broadens the way society approaches the tree with the aesthetic enhancement enabling a change of consciousness and the transformation of the tree into a sacred object, contributing to its protection… Read More
Chapter Eleven
Aesthetically Pleasing Plantings: Restoring Native Vegetation in Coastal Sydney
By Sue Stevens
Book Chapter in ‘Using the Visual and Performing Arts to Encourage Pro-Environmental Behaviour’. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, England. ISBN: 1-5275-5715-4. ISBN13: 978-1-5275-5715-4. Release Date: 12th October 2020
The connection between the visual and performing arts and caring for the natural environment has been recognised for at least the past 40-45 years; one connection being that of observation (Curtis, 2003). The project described here, while primarily a land restoration project, was designed in a non-conventional way to make it interesting and aesthetically pleasing, thus inspiring a greater appreciation of local native flora and encourage pro-environmental behaviours in local residents and visitors to the area.
I have been fascinated and inspired by… Read More
Chapter Twenty
Dissolving the Veil of Separation: Art Beyond a Human Viewpoint
by Kassandra Bossell – Eco Arts, 2019
In this chapter I describe a collaboration between ecologist, Garry Daly and myself. We worked together to create an exhibition that consisted of a single large art installation. In this exhibition (Visible / Invisible) we sought to bring together human and non-human perspectives of ecosystems. The exhibition presented organisms that are ordinarily invisible to the naked eye at a human, ‘huggable’ scale and imagined what their perspectives might be. I cannot claim to access the phenomenological viewpoint of another organism, including humans, but I can use empathy to imagine, to feel, to try to understand what it is like to be them. As co-evolving organisms with humans, they have developed capabilities on which we depend, for example phytoplankton creating oxygen… Read More
Adorning and Adoring: The Sacred Trees of India
2018. Adorning and Adoring: The Sacred Trees of India. Special Issue on Sacred Trees, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture. USA. [JSRNC 12.3 (2018) 261-284] JSRNC (print) ISSN 1749-4907 http://doi.org.10.1558/jsrnc.33347 JSRNC (online) ISSN 1749-4915. Equinox Publishing Ltd 2018, 415 The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX.
Sacred trees are found throughout India and venerated by those of varied religious groups, including animists, devotees of local cults, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. Since 2003 I have travelled the sub-continent of India, conducting interviews and photographing the aesthetic enhancement of trees as an act of worship. Here, examples of veneration and a selection of the myths, beliefs, and rituals that underlie this practice are… Read More
Hindu Tree Veneration as a mode of Environmental Encounter
2009. Hindu Tree Veneration as a mode of Environmental Encounter. Published in Leonardo -The Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology. Volume 42, Number 1 Edition. Pps 43 – 51. Coloured Photograph P.9. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/42/1 – under general articles.
When I came across a group of decorated trees at Palani in Tamil Nadu, India, I was immediately struck by their transformation. Their covering of golden yellow turmeric powder, broadened and even changed my perception of this otherwise normal grouping of trees set amid the bush land, to encompass a sense of reverence and enchantment. As an Australian
artist trained in the European tradition… Read More
Chapter Fourteen
Can Interdisciplinary Teaching Lead by the Arts Contribute to the Debate on Contemporary Environmental Issues?
2017. Can Interdisciplinary Teaching Lead by the Arts Contribute to the Debate on Contemporary Environmental Issues? Book chapter in ‘Building Sustainability with the Arts’. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, England. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9133-9. ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9133-2
Over the last twenty years, a number of projects have developed from collaborations between artists, architects, landscape designers, curators, engineers, scientists and communities that involve the remediation of land that has become environmentally depleted. This has given rise to a confluence of art, technology and social engagement, and could be considered a new form of interdisciplinary practice. My paper discusses an interdisciplinary elective… Read More