Sugata Ray:
Das Paradies: The Anthropocene Extinction in the Early Modern World

Taking Roelant Savery’s Das Paradies (1626) as a starting point, this talk explores the role of Western European artistic cultures and collecting practices in inciting the ecocide of the post-1492 Anthropocene Extinction. In particular, Sugata Ray explores how Savery’s celebrated painting of Adam and Eve consuming the forbidden fruit amidst a verdant landscape inhabited by animals such as the now-extinct dodo, endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, became foundational for scientific and cultural perceptions of the extinction of nonhuman life in colonial worlds.

Sugata Ray is Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian art and architecture in the Departments of History of Art and South & Southeast Asian Studies and Director of the South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. His research is on post-1400s art and architecture with a focus on climate change and the environment. Ray’s recent books include Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (2019) and Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence (coedited; 2020).

The lecture will take place as a part of the workshop Art and Conflict in Times of Climate Change.