This talk considers the pivotal place of artisanal knowledge and craft production in Goa broadly, and at the Convent of Santa Monica particularly, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Goan artworks were the result of a cultural heritage seated within a complex nexus of not only sea routes and ocean waters, but also roads, rivers, and paths connecting the Konkan coastline with the Indian subcontinent’s interior. The ecological locales, materials, and labour conditions which underpinned the creation of crafts in Goa also speak to the specific concerns of the Augustinian order at Santa Monica and their first abbess Madre Filipa da Trindade. In this talk, Dr Keli Wood will demonstrate how the artistic production that boomed in Goa for Catholic commissions was built upon economic, guild, and travel practices of artisans inherited from the pre-Portuguese period in both Goa and the Deccan interior.

Dr. Kelli Wood is the Dale G. Cleaver Asst. Professor of Art History – Museum & Curatorial Studies at the Univ. of Tennessee. Her research on the visual and material culture of games and sports spanning from Renaissance board games to contemporary video games has been published in journals and in edited volumes and art magazines. Her new scholarly projects turn toward sixteenth and seventeenth-century Goa, India. Museum work has always been central to Wood’s scholarship and she has held positions and worked on exhibitions at the Harn Museum of Art, the Smart Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art, among others.

Date: 5th December, Friday

Time: 6:00 PM

Venue: Museum of Christian Art, Old Goa