Yoga is regarded around the world as a path to health and spiritual insight. Many people are aware of its origins in India. But the motivations that compelled countless individuals to pursue yogic paths over the past 2,500 years are less well known. Few people are familiar with yoga’s rich diversity—the different schools of practice that developed over the centuries, and yoga’s varied meanings for practitioners and those they encountered.
Yoga: The Art of Transformation (on view at the Asian Art Museum from February 21–May 25, 2014) delves into a largely untapped resource—visual culture—to illuminate key aspects of yoga practice as well as its hidden histories. With sculpture, paintings, illustrated manuscripts, prints, photographs, books, and films, it is the first art exhibition to explore the centrality of yoga in Indian culture.
Three galleries present important aspects of yoga that entered the realm of representation between 100 CE and the 1940s. The first gallery explores key elements of yoga practice, yogic conceptions of the body, and the role of teachers. The second gallery looks first at the importance of place in yoga practice, and the associations between yoga and power. Next, it considers ways yoga practitioners (yogis) have been understood and imagined in Indian and Western cultures. In the third gallery, through the works of Indian philosophers, medical practitioners, and yoga teachers, we locate the origins of many features of modern yoga as a regimen for health, fitness, and spiritual well-being.
The exhibition’s 135 works shed light on yoga’s meanings and philosophical depth, the practice’s significance within Indian culture and religion, its movements across communities, and the artists who transformed profound concepts into material form.