Materials
paint
ICH Materials 220
Publications(Article)
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Bringing the Stories of Vietnam to the WorldGlobalization, the age of information, and a prime era of technology where cultures and meanings collide—it is strange how we often find ourselves disorientated with it all, the local versus the global, the familiar versus the foreign. Just so, the narrative surrounding Vietnam has quite a “foreign” presence among the international audience, and even domestically to some degree. The first images people think of when it comes to Vietnam are perhaps the war, or maybe they’d focus on the cuisine and natural scenery thanks to the effort of tourism footage in more recent years. The image is either of the country’s trauma-bound identity or a paradise land of amazing landscapes. While not entirely wrong, those narratives don’t fully reflect the complexity of a Vietnam that was, is, and will be. Telling a diverse and complex Vietnamese story in an honest and caring manner is one of the goals of Cultura Fish; it’s a direct result of our very lived experiences of interacting with our peers from across the globe and within the country.Year2022NationViet Nam
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BAI CHOI FOLK ART OF VIETNAM AND SIMILAR ART FORMS AROUND THE WORLDThe Vietnamese Institute for Musicology and the Binh Dinh Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism have jointly organized Bai choi Folk Art of Vietnam and Similar Art Forms around the World, an international conference held on 13 and 14 January 2015 in Qui Nhon City, Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam.Year2015NationSouth Korea
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THE ART OF MASKS AND MAKEUP IN HAT BOIHat boi is a Vietnamese intangible traditional performing art that has taken shape and developed during Vietnam’s history and is still preserved. It is form of traditional opera which has a five-hundrend-year-old history. It contains features close to the cultures of many other countries in Asia.Year2019NationSouth Korea
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Wall of the Lord: Famed Pilgrimage Temple Branches into ICH PromotionNathdwara is a famed Vaishnavite pilgrimage site in the Aravalli Hills, fifty kilometers northeast of Udaipur, Rajasthan. Hundreds of thousands of devotees annually visit its central Shrinathji Temple to worship a fourteenth century icon of Shrinathji, a beloved child incarnation of Lord Krishna.\n\nBesides Shrinathji’s sanctum, Nathdwara was also widely known for its unique regional arts—the worship-related pichwai paintings that depict Krishna’s life stories for the unlettered and the reverential semiclassical haveli sangeet music that was sung and played directly to Krishna. The area was also famous for delightful terracotta sculptures that portray sacred images from the countryside and touching scenes of village life.\n\nIn recent years, however, haveli sangeet has lost its following, and few young musicians try to learn its demanding dhrupad-based songs. Similarly pichwai painting and local terracotta arts have fallen on hard times. While there is still a bit of tourist interest in these ancient traditions, the impact of western fashion, mass advertising, and globalized culture have driven both out of vogue domestically.\n\nMost of India’s religious institutions confine their efforts to purely spiritual endeavors, but given Shrinathji’s long intimate relations with the town’s cultural life, the temple took notice of its artists’ plight. The Nathdwara Temple Board, Shrinathji’s managing trust, and trustee Sri Vishal Bava suggested providing some kind of innovative platform for artists to showcase their paintings and crafts on the crowded streets outside the temple.\n\nSri Dinesh Kothari, Nathdwara Temple Board CEO, took this concept and designed a project called Wall of the Lord that used a broad empty stretch on the temple’s own outer wall as a public gallery. Approximately 140 pichwai painters have now completed 63 masterful paintings on this 180 meter expanse, in styles ranging from traditional and devotional to expressively modern. Three exquisite large terracotta murals have also been installed there, and together, these exhibits not only beautify the temple but also offer dramatic visibility, hopefully renewing market demand for struggling local ICH artists.\n\nLaunched on 26 January 2017, the novel Wall of the Lord initiative has already started attracting its own audience as a must-see site of the Nathdwara pilgrimage that reminds visiting devotees of the splendor of their heritage and the inseparable nature of creativity and the divine.\n\nPhoto : Nathdwara painters adorning the temple wall © Lokesh PaliwalYear2017NationIndia
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Rickshaw Painting: Bangladeshi ArtIntroducing rickshaws, three-wheeled non-motorized passenger carts, to the urban areas of Bangladesh in the 1940s led to a new art form, rickshaw painting.\n\nRickshaw painters learn their craftsmanship from mentors at workshops. Their passion is evident in the painted backboards and rear side panels, hood cut-outs, and flower-filled brass vases. But, the most interesting aspect of rickshaw painting is the colorful rectangular tin sheet used at the rear of rickshaws, because it represents the painter’s choice and designing skill.\n\nThe tin sheet on the back was once decorated only with portraits of famous movie stars. However, in the late 1970s, the government imposed a ban on portraying these portraits, so the artists introduced animals mimicking the activities of the movie stars in films. While the government lifted the ban in the late 1980s, the artists continue with experimentation that include animals, flowers, and other motifs.\n\nRickshaw painting themes also reflect global events. For example, following the the Gulf War, portraits of Saddam Hussein appeared on rickshaws in Dhaka.\n\nThough the rickshaw painters have no formal academic knowledge, they modify the subjects and compositions according to changes in time and sociopolitical conditions. As a result, their works combine folkloric, movie, political, and commercial imagery, depicting their heart’s desires as well as their religious devotion.\n\nBangla Academy, a state-run research institute in Bangladesh, has prepared a nomination file on behalf of the government of Bangladesh to inscribe Dhaka’s rickshaw and rickshaw painting on the UNESCO Representative List.\n\nPhoto : A painting on tin sheet to be used to decorate rear of a rickshaw © Firoz MahmudYear2017NationBangladesh
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Mongolian Culture and HeritageThe culture of the Central Asian steppes expresses itself vividly in the lifestyle of traditional nomadic practices. Mongolian culture has been in practice in the nomadic life and the traditions surrounding the nomad’s home (ger). And it is present in religious celebrations, national festivals, art and crafts, music and dance, language and literature, which form the backbone of Mongolian intangible cultural heritage of Mongolia. Mongolia is filled with valuable cultural properties and intangible cultural heritage of humanity that have been kept or practiced for thousands of years.\n\nGer, Mongolian Traditional Dwelling\nThe traditional architecture of the Mongols differed strongly from that of the settled peoples of Asia and other continents. Centuries ago, there the ger, also known as a yurt, appeared. It still offers shelter to nomads in particular places in Central Asia. Its development and fundamental principles are determined by the specific features of the way of life of Mongol tribes, which made it necessary to evolve a light and collapsible structure to be used as a dwelling or for public functions.\n\nMongolian Language and Literature\nMongolian is the language of most of the Mongolian population and inner Mongolia. By origin, Mongolian is one of the Altaic family of languages, and the history of the Mongolian language is long and complicated. Significant literary work of early Mongolia includes The Secret History of the Mongols, which was published in 1228).\n\nMongolian Religion and Beliefs\nThe Mongols have practiced several religions, of which Shamanism and Buddhism were the most common. The faith in Mongolia is Buddhism, though the state and religion were separated during the socialist period, but with the transition to the parliamentary republic in the 1990s, there has been a general revival of faiths across the country\n\nMongolian Art and Crafts\nMongolian arts and crafts have been passed down across generations from the Paleolithic times to today, leaving behind deep impressions on all facets of life and conscious, aesthetic, and philosophical thinking. Highly developed Mongolian arts and crafts come from the second millennium BCE. The works included sculptured heads of wild animals with exaggerated features. Other items include knives, daggers, and other items of practical and religious use.\n\nMongolian Music and Dance\nMusic is an integral part of Mongolian culture. Among Mongolia’s unique contributions to the world’s musical culture are the long songs, overtone singing, and morin khuur (the horse-headed fiddle). The music of Mongolia is also rich with varieties related to the various ethnic groups of the country. Among the most popular forms of modern music in Mongolia are Western pop and rock genres and the mass songs written by contemporary authors in the form of folk songs.\n\nHorse Culture of Mongolia\nIt is famously known that horses play a large role in the Mongols’ daily and national lives. Common sayings are, “A Mongol without a horse is like a bird without wings,” and “Mongols are born on horseback” these are arguably true words. Even today, horse-based culture is still practiced by nomadic Mongolians.\n\nVisit https://www.toursmongolia.com/tours for additional information about Mongolian culture.\n\nPhoto 1 : Prairie meadow grass inner Mongolia traditional clothing © Batzaya Choijiljav\nPhoto 2~7 : © Batzaya ChoijiljavYear2020NationMongolia
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ICH in Public Transport: Truck Art in PakistanListed on the UNESCO Register of Good Safeguarding Practices, the Oselvar boat was resurrected from near-extinction when the Os Båtbyggjarlag Boat-Builders Guild, Os municipality, and Hordaland County founded the non-profit boatyard and workshop foundation Oselvarverkstaden in 1997 with the support of the Arts Council Norway. The Oselvar boat used to be western Norway’s main mode of transportation and, as predominantly known, it is a Norwegian cultural icon that symbolizes the kingdom’s leisure craft. On the other hand, Costa Rica’s carreta or traditional oxcart is the Central American country’s most famous craft. Inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008 (though originally proclaimed in 2005), the traditional oxcart used to transport coffee beans in a ten-to-fifteen-day journey, from Costa Rica’s central valley over the mountains to Puntaneras on the Pacific coast. As a mode of transport, it lingers on a mobility that is built around agriculture, transcending a cultural aesthetics informed by rural imaginary. The presence alone of carreta is an explicit call to end deforestation and be much more mindful about climate change. The Oselvar boat of Norway and Costa Rica’s traditional oxcart are two living examples of the creative union between transportation and craft so that we may see public transportation as a cultural understanding of intangible heritage.\n\nThe South Asian nation of Pakistan, with its twenty-six national highways and three strategic highways, does not shy away from parading the abundance and importance of ICH in public roads. Pakistan’s truck art, the largest art industry in the country, is a living construction of identity by making visible a host of cultural signifiers, from religious piety to popular imagination. Albeit there is no economic benefit from decorating a truck, and even though such undertaking costs at least a whooping USD 2000 back in 2011, it has been the norm, according to Jamal J. Elias, for fleet owners to have their trucks decorated. Since 96% of the freight in Pakistan is carried by trucks, one can easily imagine the widespread presence of truck art. Focusing on the art in the craft of vehicular decoration, as well as on pleasure, protection, and suffering experienced by truck drivers, Anna Schmid contends that truck art is a form of popular culture in which central societal assumptions and values are contested in that truck art, by the very process of putting it in the public sphere, puts social mobility in a terrain bounded by semiotics or the study of signs and how these signs meaningfully interact with each other in religious, political, and cultural terms. Schmid draws truck construction by highlighting the specialized craftsmen principally responsible for it: blacksmiths (who attach a steel skeleton to the chassis to hold the body and the driver’s cabin), the body makers (who create the body composed of wooden pine slats held together by metal and wooden cross-pieces), lacquerers (who spray paint the body), upholsterers (who install the seat of the cabin), and the painters (who apply motifs and other necessary decorations).\n\nUnsuspecting the ethnic diversity of Pakistani society, on the basis of categorical decorative motifs such as explicit religious symbols and images, talismanic and fetish objects, talismanically or religiously loaded symbols, idealized elements of life, elements from modern life, the non-religious calligraphic program of the truck, Jamal J. Elias, a scholar who thoroughly examined the typologies and evolution of truck art and proposed five regional styles of truck art: Punjabi, Swati, Peshawar, Baluchi, and Karachi styles.\n\nTruck art is an exemplary case to theorize that the process of understanding ICH is a public work, a work that compels mediation and collective valuation. Something that transforms personal sentiments into public feelings. And what’s more interesting about the truck art of Pakistan, other than it being an industry of its own, is its direct connection to transportation—that a vessel practically meant to transport a commodity from one place to another actually carries something more than what it does, and it does beyond time and place, connecting cities and regions that ultimately become unknowable large-scale social processes. Indeed, when a symbol travels, its meaning exponentially multiplies.\n\nPhoto : Truck art ⓒ B.B.P. HosmilloYear2019NationPakistan
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TattooingThe arc of cultural heritage is far broader than many realize. For many, the term calls to mind the physical remains of the past, often in the image of ancient buildings and ruins, or the history of a collective. If prompted to define what heritage encompasses in a personal sense, one might think of their own family’s lineage and ancestry. But in either sense, many of us understand heritage to be something outside of the self rather than something that we are a living part of. We are vehicles for living cultural heritage, not just ethnically, socially, or culturally, but physically. Tangible heritage might be best understood as very much alive, close to home, and applicable to each of us when we consider the body as a context for it.\n\nFrom the way we style our hair and the makeup we paint on our faces to the clothes we choose to wear and the adornments we dress up in, we all adopt insignias of culture and express our identities on the physical plain in modes that have been shaped by heritage. Tattooing is one of these mediums. Inking the skin as to permanently brand ourselves with a visual marker communicates something about who we are or what has touched our lives, to others as much as to ourselves. In this practice, the unseen intangible heritage and identity we know and feel is transformed into something tangible and corporeal.\n\nWe are hardly the first people to manipulate the body in such a way. Tattooing has a long history, a tradition adopted from ancient cultures from the Alps to Mongolia, from Greenland to China, from Egypt to Mexico, from Russia to the South Pacific. Whether marking the skin of a newly initiated member of a group, a tribe leader, a spiritual worshipper, a loyal warrior, or an outcast criminal, tattoos carried their potential to express diverse meanings into more recent history and the modern day. We’re all familiar with the sailor’s anchor, the Indian bride’s henna, the biker’s skull and crossbones, the adoption of the tribal tattoo or Chinese character in Western popular culture. But what stands out is not so much the range of meanings and contexts that tattoos might indicate, but rather the instinct to mark one’s skin in a permanent way, a tale as old as time.\n\nIt is striking to me that no matter where in the world these practices developed, so many diverse groups of indigenous ancestors were inclined to physically demarcate themselves and others, developing a technique of self-expression that would live on. I wonder why.\n\nMaybe they all recognized how powerful the skin can be as a medium for message-bearing. Upon this visible and undetachable bodily canvas, the way one is seen by others is manipulated from the first glance. As we dance through this ancient-turned-modern ritual today, whether the symbols we choose speak for themselves or inspire questions about who we are or where we’ve been, we consider ourselves branded for life.\n\nBut ‘for life’ and forever are not the same thing. In the past and at present, tattoos represent an attempt at permanence that is almost endearing in its falsehood. Though the ink on the skin itself may be unremovable, the skin and body itself is not eternal. The corpses discovered across Europe, Asia, the Americas and Oceania that attest to the long history of tattooing remind us that ‘undoable’ physical manipulations we make will last only as long as the body does. Whatever we regard as permanent is never really such, and after a time the tangible becomes intangible, whether we are referring to body or brick. Palpable proof becomes a fairy tale, man becomes myth. The physical is not perpetual, and tangible heritage does not last forever just because it takes material form.\n\nIt’s within this ongoing cycle of permanence and impermanence that cultural heritage is situated. Though we feel compelled to preserve the flesh of the past on personal and broader scales, matter is more delicate than we often accept, and the risk of disintegration is always looming. Tattooing is a poignant example of one of the most effective ways to retain the substance of the past as centuries go by: to keep it alive in practice, even if not in the exact form it once took, with the stories of where it came from accessible for inspiration.\n\nMore of Issabella’s work is available at museandwander.co.uk\n\nPhoto : Traditional Tattooing ToolsYear2020NationPacific Ocean,China,Egypt,Mexico,Russian Federation
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Communities Connecting Heritage: From West Bengal to WashingtonCultural exchange promotes cultural diversity and contributes to cultural sustainability. This was the key learning from the Communities Connecting Heritage (CCH) program supported by the US Department of State and administered by World Learning. Learning Together for a Brighter Future was a collaboration under this program, between banglanatak dot com, an Indian social enterprise working on culture and development, and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) in Washington DC. Around twenty young cultural professionals from the USA and thirty-one young tradition bearers from the state of West Bengal in eastern India had varied exchanges on art, music, food, lifestyle, and globalization as well as the use of social media in popular culture. The Indian participants included traditional storytellers or patuas, who paint stories on long scrolls and sing them; artists practicing the ancient dokra metal craft; Baul folk singers; and theatre artists. There were also in-person visits to West Bengal and Washington DC by a five-member delegation from each side. The youngsters not only shared photos and videos explaining their culture but also discussed cultural sustainability; virtual workshops were held to develop skills in interviewing and recording, and effective storytelling. Finally, the Indian and American participants paired up to write blogs on shared interests and experiences; the subjects varied from discovering common concerns on raising a child to managing heritage sites. Commonalities were also found in the traditions, for example food items like sopapilla and luchi, and painting traditions like patachitra and retablo.\n\nDuring the CFCH delegation’s tour of West Bengal in February 2018, the Americans met the artists at the World Peace Music Festival Sur Jahan in Kolkata, visited cultural and heritage landmarks, and learned about community-based cultural industries. They also participated in a round table on heritage education for youth and an exhibition titled Through the Eyes of Young Americans that summed up their experience. From June to July 2018, the Indian delegation visited Washington DC. The city’s vivid cosmopolitan character, a mind-boggling array of cuisines, and a stunning nightlife mesmerized them. Engagement of community and the larger public in a weekend drum circle, weekly jazz concerts, DC Alley Museum, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival left a deep impression. The patuas painted a scroll on the story of rights campaigns at the National Mall; the audience loved it and the song narrating the story. On 13 August 2018, a webinar was held to share the participants’ experiences and insights. As the program drew to a close, it had succeeded in bringing the multicultural roots and ethos of America to the young Indians’ hearts and sensitized the young Americans about Bengal’s cultural traditions. For detailed information, please check the webinar below and the event’s blog.\n\nPhoto 1 : Learning scroll painting at Patua village ⓒ banglanatakdotcom\nPhoto 2 : Bauls discussing music on the move with Catalonian musicians ⓒ banglanatakdotcom\nPhoto 3 : Indian team at the Lincoln Memorial in the USA ⓒ banglanatakdotcomYear2018NationIndia
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Patuas of Bengal: Singing and Painting NarrativesPatachitra of Bengal is a storytelling tradition of eastern India practiced by a community known as Patuas. They paint the stories in long scrolls and sing them. The Patuas used to visit rural households and sing songs from mythology, epics, and folklore. This article narrates how the Patuas community living in Naya Village of the Paschim Medinipur District of West Bengal revived their storytelling tradition. There are around five hundred Patuas spread across the districts of Purba and Paschim Medinipur.\nTwo decades ago, fewer than a score of the tradition bearers in Naya continued the practice. With the proliferation of electronic media, storytellers have lost their audience. To revive their tradition, Contact Base worked with the Patuas to document orally transmitted songs and the forgotten processes of making natural colors. Under the leadership of the veteran storytellers in the village, the Patuas started to paint and sing traditional songs as well as new ones on contemporary issues and happenings. The practitioners started painting their stories on a diverse range of decorative and utility products. Their work was widely appreciated. The Patuas started traveling across India and the globe. The recognition created interest among the youth to pursue the tradition. Currently, all Patua families in Naya are pursuing patachitra as a sustainable livelihood. The painters are regularly commissioned for wall art installations in airports, museums, and prestigious buildings. The village has a community museum. More than a decade back, a village festival was started to create awareness in the community of storytellers.Year2023NationIndia
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TRADITIONAL LACQUERWARE VILLAGES OF VIETNAMThe painting industry and paint products in Vietnam have a long tradition. The first vestiges of paint materials were unearthed hundreds of years before the Christian era. Since ancient times, plastic latex was extracted from bark for its stickiness, durability, and resistance to rain, sunshine, salt water, and high humidity. Therefore, Vietnamese people used it to plaster boats and paint on wooden furniture, rattan, and bamboo to increase aestheticism and durability. Previously, the Nguyen lords took plastic resin from forests in Quang Tri in Quang Ngai Province or Nam Dong district of Thua Thien Hue and later mainly from Phu Tho and Yen Bai provinces.Year2017NationSouth Korea
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STORIES AND TRADITIONS IN PAINT ON CLOTHPatachitra is a story telling tradition of the Medinipore region of West Bengal in Eastern India. In this unique art form, oral tradition meets the visual structures of a narrative. The bard presents the story with pictures and simultaneously narrates a song called “Pater Gaan”. The word pata is derived from the Sanskrit and Pali word patta, which means “cloth.” Chitra means “picture.” Patachitra means “picture painted on cloth.” The painter community is called Patua. All of them bear the last name Chitrakar, meaning painter.Year2015NationSouth Korea