Maa Laxmi

In celebration of Diwali 2024, the Carlos Museum has installed Manjari Sharma's large-scale photograph of the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity, Maa Laxmi in the Christian Humann Gallery of Asian Art. The work was purchased this year in honor of 2023 Woolford B. Baker Service Award Winner Ellen Gough and is a companion to Sharma's Lord Vishnu, also in the collection. Both works are from the artist's Darshan series, which was exhibited at the Carlos as part of the 2020 exhibition, Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Expression of the Divine.

The experience of darshan is considered reciprocal—a spiritual connection between a deity and devotee. Having moved to the U.S. from Mumbai to earn her BFA in photography, Sharma felt distanced from the rituals she had grown up with and began reexamining her relationship to her culture after a decade of being away. Challenging the traditional role of her medium, she sought to use the camera to "turn multidimensional memories of sculptures and ornamental paintings of gods into two-dimensional photographs." By recreating the concept of a darshan in a contemporary setting and drawing parallels between the museum and the temple, Sharma asks the viewer to confront and contest the historic notions of preservation and presentation of Hindu deities. Returning to India to make these images, Sharma carefully selected models and a team of thirty-five Indian craftsmen who created props, sets, prosthetics, make-up, costumes, and jewelry to exacting specifications. The images are presented in deep and elaborately embossed hammered brass frames inspired by a temple-like setting. 

The Carlos is fortunate to hold two additional Sharma works, which the artist also donated to the collection from her series, Looking for a Silver Lining. The series follows her family’s decade-long journey with frontotemporal dementia.