The Ancient Festive Cityscape: Art and the Shaping of Experience
The Researchers
Zahra NewbyLink opens in a new window, Classics and Ancient History Zahra is a specialist in ancient art with interests in the roles played by material culture in expressing identities and shaping experience. She was previously the Principle Investigator of a Leverhulme Trust Funding project on 'The Materiality of Graeco-Roman Festivals', and is editor of the book The Material Dynamics of Festivals in the Graeco-Roman East (2023).
The Challenge
How did art shape experience in the ancient world? This project explores the roles played by visual imagery in conditioning the ways individuals experienced their place during religious festivals. Festivals were times when the civic community came together, but they were also opportunities to display social groupings and status. Processions and rituals took place within spaces which were full of images, from statues of priests and performers, to the repeated imagery of garlands or symbols of victory. This project asks how this repeated imagery constructed the meanings of festivals, drawing attention to specific groups and identifying what was important and should be remembered for future iterations.
Our Approach
Credit: Robert Helvie
Past scholarship on religious experience and the ancient city has largely relied on the written word in the form of literary texts or engraved inscriptions. Yet religious rituals and processions and the contests which were performed during festivals took place within and were framed by architectural spaces full of images. This project builds on my previous work on the materiality of ancient festivals, as well as research on the interactions of urban space and society, to argue that public art helped to shape memories of past events and expectations for those to come, by selectively stressing particular aspects and asserting authorised views of festivals for both participants and spectators.
Our Impact
By asserting the importance of visual art and space in the construction of experience this project offers insights not just into the ancient world, but into the importance of images in affecting the ways people understand themselves and their place in the world across a range of periods and places. It draws attention to the social hierarchies which are embedded into the cityscape, with imagery offering messages which reflect the viewpoints and aspirations of those who have the power to decide or fund this imagery. But it also shows that art can be used to communicate and reach out, drawing both citizens and visitors into a shared visual culture. It makes us think about the importance of the images we are surrounded by and the power they have to alter our perceptions of ourselves and the wider world. Lectures and workshops on this project have been run with a number of school groups, including at the Warwick Classics Network 'Ancient Worlds' days, and at secondary schools in Buckinghamshire.
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