Turn your bowl into a stupa — Rajyashri Goody in collaboration with Davlat Toshev, Umeda Hikmatova, Jasmine Rakhmonova

In this performance, hundreds of everyday bowls from Bukhara are transformed into miniature stupas, turned upside down in homage to the Buddha’s own inverted begging bowl—a gesture that perhaps inspired stupas across South Asia. These domed forms, rich with spiritual resonance, have become symbols of rebirth and resistance for the Dalit Buddhist community. The work also subtly recalls the name Bukhara itself, which may derive from the Sanskrit vihara—a Buddhist monastery or temple—evoking a deep lineage of openness and refuge across our shared landscapes. 

Dalit Buddhists today form India’s largest Buddhist group, and embrace the stupa as a marker of defiance, dignity, and hope. Pilgrimages to ancient sites like Ajanta, Ellora, and Sanchi intersect with new domes—from viharas to memorials honoring Dr. Ambedkar, the architect of India’s constitution who embraced Buddhism in his fight for marginalised communities. These contemporary viharas often echo the stupa’s form but are hollow and open, inviting entry and participation—an embodied contrast to the historical exclusion of Dalit people from entering Hindu temples.  

The bowls rising and inverting are accompanied by recipes of hunger, feasting, shame, and pride—fragments adapted from Dalit memoirs of Baby Kamble, Sharankumar Limbale, Eknath Awad, Urmila Pawar, Daya Pawar, Laxman Gaikwad, Laxman Mane, Sujatha Gidla, Bama, Omprakash Valmiki, Vasant Moon, G Kalyana Rao, Namdeo Nimgade, and Siddalingaiah. Read in English, Uzbek, Tajik, and Russian, the performance becomes a living ritual of epic proportions: bowls as stupas, refusal and affirmation entwined, a testament to the continuous cycle of resilience and transformation in everyday life experiences.

Languages: English, Uzbek, Tajik, Russian
Capacity: 200
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