Δ Black Paris

Starting in the middle of March 2007 everything in the Museum of World Cultures turns around the interconnection of art and migration. The exhibition “Black Paris. Art and History of a Black Diaspora 1906 – 2006” makes it clear that the Paris of today is not only the largest African enclave in Europe but the undisputed centre of African fashion, music, art and literature. The capital of the former French Colonial Empire is a convenient place to graphically exemplify, in spatially and temporally condensed ways, the processes of cultural and artistic interaction and inter-penetration. These processes are characteristic of North-South-relations transcending the relation of Europe and Africa to include Afro-America and the Caribbean. About every fifth of the approx. 12 million people living in the area of Greater Paris is of African, Caribbean or Afro-American descendency. Their shops, publishing houses, agencies and diaspora initiatives have marked whole quarters of the city. They give the Metropolis of Paris its multicultural flair.

The exhibition takes its start from the colonial expropriation and the invention of “l’art nègre” at the beginning of the 20th century continuing through surrealism, jazz and the negrophilia of the interwar period until the international or intercontinental migrations of the sixties and seventies of the last century. The Museum of World Cultures presents “Black Paris” as the history and iconography of the French-African Metropolis mounted as a collage of historical and documentary images from the archive and of works by modern and contemporary artists.
Responsible for the concept of the exhibition is the Iwalewa - House at the University of Bayreuth.

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Δ Discover Buddhism

“I betake myself to the Buddha. I betake myself to the Dharma. I betake myself to the Sangha.” – This threefold invocation is what Buddhists recite when wishing to express their connection to the Buddha, to his teachings and to the community of those who follow the enlightened one. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are considered the pillars of Buddhism and are also called “the three jewels”.

Within a forty square metre area, the IKAT presents for the first time objects of religious studies drawn from its own museum collection for educational purposes and items on loan from the Marburg collection. The exhibits will be supplemented by accompanying texts to-gether with photographs of India, Nepal, Thailand and Sri Lanka. 

The exhibition examines the life and teachings of the Buddha, provides insights into the life practices among Buddhist monks and nuns and illustrates religiosity among lay devotees. A map of the world provides information on the diffusion of Buddhism and indicates important places of Buddhist worship. At the end of the tour, the differences between Tibetan Bud-dhism and Zen-Buddhism make clear the various forms of Buddhist traditions. 

Didactic materials invite the visitors to themselves actively participate. The exhibition is par-ticularly suitable for teaching purposes, from elementary school to the sixth form.

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Δ Ta Moko. The Maori’s Path of Life in Tattoos.

Based on the example of New Zealand, the exhibition “Ta Moko. The Maori’s Path of Life in Tattoos” is an appreciation of the contemporary practice of tattooing in Oceania. Aside from woodcraft, another outstanding cultural achievement of the Maori, the indigenous population of country, and which endured through to the early 20th Century, was the art of tattooing. However, in the course of missionary work and the annexation of New Zealand by Great Britain during the 19th Century, traditional Ta Moko body art was banned as “the writ of the devil” and gradually disappeared.

Totalling approx. 15% of the entire population of present-day New Zealand, the Maori, who now represent a minority within their own country, have been engaging in a sustained and successful struggle for the recognition of their cultural identity and political rights. One expression of this new-found self-confidence can be witnessed in the increasing number of Maori who have once more been tattooed according to traditional practices.

The photography and texts that make up the exhibition “Ta Moko” relate the stories of six Maori, whose eventful lives have been inscribed into their skin. Important phases of life are documented by western and traditional tattooing. With sixteen, large-format, black and white photographs and biographical texts, the photographer Arno Gasteiger traces each of the particular motives for tattooing among those portrayed. In the process, he seeks to acquire a direct knowledge of the references to life of the Ta Moko and modern tattoos. To this end, the artist photographed subjects whose pasts were often located in criminal milieus: People who, during the course of their lives, have undergone radical change and who have subsequently gone on to become distinguished members of New Zealand society and presently occupy leading positions.

Many tattoos, initially illegally produced in prisons were covered and modified by Moko at later stages of life. The self-discovery of those portrayed Maori manifests itself above all in traditional tattooing as an integral part of their cultural heritage. Today, tattoo masters “pommel” into the skin the traditional patterns with sharpened blades made of bone and “engrave” the modern designs which have a direct reference to the life of the respective persons.

The photographer, Arno Gasteiger, was born in Innsbruck, in 1962. After completing his training, he immigrated to New Zealand in 1988, where he rapidly established himself as a leading photographer for the New Zealand Geographic Magazine. A total of sixty commissions for this journal have provided him with an extensive knowledge of New Zealand, the South Pacific and Australia. His experience ensured him additional commissions for several other journals such as GEO, Merian, Der Spiegel, The Smithsonian, brand eins and The New York Times Magazine. He has also dedicated a part of his work to the realisation of book projects for a number of years now. Gasteiger’s photographs have earned him several distinctions. Among others, he was awarded the
“Cathay Pacific Photographer of the Year”, in 1995 and “American Express Photographer of the Year”, in 1997. His illustrated volume Central, about Central-Otago on New Zealand’s southern island, received the renowned “Montana Book Award” in 2004.

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Δ Skin Marks – Body Pictures

The exhibition “Skin Marks – Body Pictures”, on display in the main building of the museum from the 29th April, 2006 to September, 2007 shows the human skin as a projection surface for artistic design. Over the last thirty or so years, a renewed general interest in body styling can be determined among the various cultures of the West.

Body modifications comprise a whole range of practices to which belong branding, scarification, implantation, deformations of the skull, the foot binding, beauty operations and body painting. With the discovery of the body as a bearer of sign languages signifying existential orientation and individuality, body interventions have recently experienced renewed acceptance. Especially among the various groupings within youth culture, piercing and tattooing can be expressions of personality but also of group membership. In this connection, recourse to “tribal” models of non-European cultures is especially popular, even though their social and cultural contexts have, for the most part, not been assimilated by such groups.

The exhibition displays examples of tattoos, decorative scarification and body painting from the oceans of Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. The exhibition seeks to describe these in their respective mythological, religious and social contexts. The exhibits, the majority of which are drawn from collections belonging to various Frankfurt museums, are supplemented by an extraordinary range of photographic material.

Five additional museums in the Rhine-Main region, each with their own exhibitions and programmes relating to this thematic complex, will participate at alternating times at both local and regional levels.

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