Hindu mass iconography - those eye-poppingly colourful representations of Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh and their cohorts - are the subject of Canadian filmmaker Srinivas Krishna's first major public installation When the Gods Came Down to Earth. Krishna's gods come alive on large-scale projection screens dynamically interacting with the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Uutilizing actors and computer-generated animation, each god engages in their own characteristic activity, based on the iconic poses captured in the cards, stickers and posters that populate South Asian shops and homes around the world. Krishna's playful, almost campy images are at once a kind of Indian pop art and brazen rethinks of ancient sacred concepts. As in his provocative films (including Masala, 1991 he questions how artists might confront the sanctities of Hindu and South Asian cultural experience and the European "multicultural" response.

Curated by Noah Cowan and Francisco Alvarez, presented by the Royal Ontario Museum's Institute for Contemporary Culture in association with Future Projections, Royal Ontario Museum Bloor Street Plaza, 100 Queen's Park. September 4 through 13, presented nightly throughout the Festival.