Lectures
The Poetics of Hair and Thread in Japanese Buddhist Embroideries, 1200-1500
Synopsis
The extraordinary technique of hair embroidery emerged among the late Heian period Japanese aristocracy as an important ritualized act of mourning. Even though extant textiles emulate painted surfaces of Pure Land Buddhist paintings, I aim to show that the poetics of its materiality in silk, hair, and so-called lotus stems refracted its original intent. Hair stitched to form sacred Sanskrit letters, the snail-shell curls of the Buddha, and cascading locks of bodhisattvas reimagined the textile surface as a material encasement for the divine: the polluted becoming indivisible with that which is sacred. This talk centers on a little-studied set of embroidered Welcoming Descent of the Amida Buddha Triad images, one of the most beloved scenes contemplated at the end of one’s life, to explore shifting understandings of hair embroidery from the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. By weaving together analyses of neglected textiles alongside corresponding poetry, inscriptions, and ritual compendia, this talk tells a new story of the affective, aesthetic, and religious life of premodern Japan: one where fabrics gave material presence to mourning, needlework enacted sokushin jōbutsu (Buddhahood in this very body), forms visualized complex teachings of Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism, and vibrant threads resuscitated image relics of Chūjōhime. In so doing, this study challenges modern assumptions about the hierarchy of artistic media and considers the way cloth objects animated religious devotion.
Brief Biography
Carolyn Wargula is Assistant Professor of Art History. She is a specialist of Japanese Buddhist art with a focus on the materiality and intermediality of textiles, the social significances of the body, and the role of gendered ritual practices. Her forthcoming book project, Embodied Embroideries: Gender, Agency, and the Body in Japanese Buddhism, examines the mortuary practice of hair embroidery from the late twelfth- to the seventeenth-centuries to consider how the medium appealed particularly to women as a means to achieve enlightenment. Professor Wargula was born in Japan and grew up in Okinawa and Sendai before moving to the United States at the age of sixteen. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020 and conducted archival research at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto as a Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellow. Her dissertation was awarded the “University of Pittsburgh James and Susanne Wilkinson Research Prize for Outstanding Scholarship on Topics in Premodern Art” and the “Getty-Heidelberg Workshop Connecting Art History Grant.” Prior to Bucknell University, Professor Wargula taught courses on East Asian Art at Williams College. Last year, she was appointed a Postdoctoral Associate in the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. Her publications have been featured in Religions and in a forthcoming issue of the Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies.
Lecture Date
Monday, February 17, 2025