SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Ethnographies allow for the crafting of detailed inquiries, explanations, caveats and links between different social phenomena. But, how do visual anthropologists depict religiously plural, syncretic, mixed and shared environments? Do they have to negotiate between the material and the intangible in their work? Are the ambiguous boundaries, blending and fragmentation of religion an obstacle for the visual media? Do researchers have to turn to wholly different methods and techniques? The Shared Sacred Landscapes exhibition features diverse examples of co-orchestrated rituals, feasts and sacred spaces that speak of rich historical and present-day encounters in the polities increasingly partitioned along the lines of religious identity. The exhibition features 128 images by 31 contributors, introducing 35 shared sacred landscapes across five continents and one sea. The notion of religiously shared landscape is not qualified by way of either harmonious relationships or enmities, but rather as the spatio-temporal aperture for the understanding of relation - co-operation, friction, entanglement and exchange - in the dynamic lifeworlds of religion. The exhibition primarily showcases anthropological photography, designed to be accessible to academic and non-academic audiences. Focusing on the visual aspects of shared spaces, it includes only brief descriptions of the illustrated situations. The exhibition will be inaugurated on the sharedsacred.com website during the Khidr Dialogues Symposium in May 2021. The Shared Sacred Landscapes exhibition is organised by Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović, Research Associate in Inter-Faith Relations at the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. It is a core element of the Shared Sacred Landscapes: Interfaith Dialogues in Cambridge project, supported by the Public Engagement Starter Fund, University of Cambridge.