Dr. Talinn Grigor sets light to the interimperial identities in 19th century Parsi architecture, through the Vatcha Adaran Zoroastrian Fire Temple, Bombay.
Building Bombay was at the forefront of the religious, philanthropic, and political agenda of the Parsis, India’s Persian Zoroastrian ethnoreligious minority. Thousands of buildings like the Vatcha Adaran were commissioned in the ‘Persian Revival’, as the Parsis portrayed themselves as heirs of the ancient Persian Achaemenid and Sassanian Empires. But wealthy patrons also drew from European Gothic Revivalism to solidify their privileged position in the contemporary British Raj. Both foundational and forward-facing, the Vatcha Adaran’s architectural ambivalence reflects the Parsis’ efforts to interpret these particular - often conflicting - interimperial identities.
PRESENTER: Dr. Talinn Grigor, Professor and Chair of the Art History Program at the University of California, Davis. She specialises in 19-20th century art and architectural histories of Iran and Parsi India, through the framework of post-colonial and critical theories. She is the author of The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture, published in July 2021.
ART: Vatcha Adaran Zoroastrian Fire Temple, Bombay (1881).
IMAGE: ‘Bai Pirojbai Dadabhoy Maneckji Vatcha Agiary 1881’. 
SOUNDS: Pedram Khavarzamini.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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