Pierre Palayan
Pierre Palayan
PhD Candidate in Art History, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.
Pierre Palayan’s research explores the role of porcelain in assessing the questions of what the Ottoman Empire meant to Western Europeans and how European powers represented Ottoman culture and politics during the eighteenth century. The research examines the political engagement between Europe and the Ottoman empire by focusing on the image of the Ottomans as portrayed by small-scale sculptures and other objects, and by considering the relationship between porcelain and the cultures associated with the aristocratic courts, turquerie and cosmopolitanism, and its significance within discourses having to do with geopolitics and nationalism.