From Art Objects to Ecosystems: Reframing Himalayan Buddhist Shrines - Talk by Melissa Kerin

Melissa R. Kerin is an art historian specializing in South Asian visual culture, sacred spaces, and the intersections of art, religion, and cultural heritage. Perched atop a large outcropping in the Ladakhi village of Tingmosgang is a much-adored shrine housing a white stone, four-armed sculpture of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. Kerin argues that this shrine functions not simply as the house of a miraculous image, but as the center of a dynamic devotional system activated through rituals, fertility rites, local lore, and regional pilgrimage.