From Shrine to Glass Case and Back Again: The Agency of South Asian Religious Artefacts in Secular and Sacred Contexts

This research interrogates the shifting semiotics of South Asian religious objects and images as they traverse museum and temple spaces in the UK. It critically examines the processes of decontextualization and recontextualization that shape the reception and interpretation of these objects. While museums position South Asian material culture within taxonomies of art and heritage, temple reliquaries and community spaces engage in their own acts of curatorial framing, embedding objects within devotional and ritualistic contexts. The paper explores how South Asian visuality is negotiated in these spaces, how institutional practices mediate religious materiality, and how objects maintain their agency despite secularized modes of representation. By foregrounding visitor engagement and institutional responses, this research reveals the contested nature of South Asian objects in contemporary diasporic settings, where the tensions between veneration, preservation, and public display continue to challenge rigid binaries of the sacred and the secular.