Δ Being Object Being Art

Cultures contribute to the richness of this world through their uniqueness and variety – as do their material products. This is reflected in the high-quality ethnographic collections from Africa, the Americas, Southeast Asia, Oceania and East Asia at the Museum of World Cultures in Frankfurt/Main. For the first time, 130 ethnographica – everyday objects or ritual items from indigenous societies – taken from the abundance of a collection inventory comprising 67.000 items, are publicly presented from the point of view of 'the masterpiece' in an exquisite art project. The concept of 'masterpiece' comes from the century-old tradition of craft education. While a journeyman completed his apprenticeship with a 'journeyman's piece', only the one who was generally recognized as 'master' because of his excellent craftsmanship – among many other requirements to be fulfilled – received the title of a master.

Selected from a personal point of view by the regional curators, the beholder is meant to discover the extraordinary, the elaborate, the different, the perfect, the harmonic or even the disturbing in the objects concerned. Although the presentation of the works – the lack of space preventing from showing more than 98 items in the exhibition – underlines the aspect of art, the objects are also interpreted in their ethnographic contexts.

The title "Being Object. Being Art. Masterpieces from the Collections of the Museum of World Cultures in Frankfurt/Main" thus clarifies the intention of the curators: the issue 'art or context', discussed over and over again in presentations of non-Western-art – cannot be answered with an apodictic 'either/or' but with an 'as well as'.

The encounter with the objects which are incorporating the artistic, social and political concepts of indigenous societies promises to be a unique and fascinating experience of art. The latter is confirmed by a catalogue accompanying the exhibition in which all 130 works are reproduced: For this project the objects have been freshly photographed, some even for the first time.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive publication:
Being Object. Being Art
Masterpieces from the collections of the Museum of World CulturesFrankfurt am Main.
Sibeth, Achim (ed.): P. 323, 210 Illustrations, (ISBN 978 5 8030 3338 3)
€49.80
More information can be found at publications.
 

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Δ Bali in the Focus of the Camera. Even before the First World War, Europeans partially introduced the romantic cliché of a heavenly life in Bali through a wave of illustrated books, travel stories, and films. The 112 pictures of the exhibition deliberately focus our attention on the photographs taken by photographers born and living in Bali rather than those taken by Western photographers. In the course of the approximately 80 years their work encompasses, the photographers Auw Kok Heng (1913-1967), his son Karyadinata Sudjana (born 1942) and Ida Bagus Putra Aduyana (born 1958), representing three generations, have experimented and worked with very different camera types and varied photographic media. Their photographic work certainly represents the style of the artists' times and meets the expectations of their respective generation. At the same time, it speaks to the individual expression each artist developed through his photography.



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Δ The Look into ones one’s Face

The Western image of Tibet is often one-sided and imbued with clichés which are either about Chinese repression or the myth of the legendary “Shangrila”. The fact that Tibet is a complex modern society is far more rarely perceived. In 2009, Lhasa, the capital, is a mixture of Chinese small-town streets lined with billboard-decorated concrete buildings and an ancient Tibetan city centre with gold-gleaming temple roofs. Lhasa is a meeting point for pilgrims from all directions and, at the same time, a garrison town and a commercial centre.

In the last years, in spite of all restrictions, a vibrant art scene has established itself. Its development is thriving on far-reaching changes within the subjugated Tibetan society – on a thin dividing line between post-communist movements, global internet culture and Buddhism. A handful of young artists, among them Chinese colleagues living in Tibet for a long time, have founded a gallery in the heart of the old town. It bears the name of Gendün Chöpel, the first modern artist and scientist who is an icon of the secular freethinking people of Tibet.

For the first time, photo documents from eleven artists of the Gendün Chöpel Gallery are to be seen in a Western country. These allow some very personal insights into the Tibetan everyday life between tradition, repression and the debate over a modern Tibetan identity. The title of the exhibition – “The look into one’s own face” – has been chosen by the photographers themselves because it is an old Tibetan phrase. In Buddhism it means the moment when a man or a woman reaches a fundamental knowledge of his or her own being unhampered by prejudice – that is when s/he is “enlightened”.

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