As I walked into the Fowler Museum exhibition room, my sight
was caught by the big boat standing at the middle of the room. The whole
exhibition has a familiar ancient Asian sense to me. The textile on the boat is
made with typical eastern pattern, the edges of the boat curve up just like
what I saw in my primary school textbook. But what shocked me more is the story
behind the boat.
Just like the native Americans crossed nearly half the earth
to come to Continental America, the owners of the boats sailed vessels in
ancient times to migrate throughout a region spanning more that halfway around the
globe. These people were originated in Taiwan and they were mainly seafaring agriculturalists.
Generations passed they gradually occupied the Southeast Asia like Philippines
and Indonesia, then they didn’t stop but traveled farther to Solomon Islands
and Marianas. In later migrations they even made to Madagascar, Hawaii, New
Zealand and Easter Island more the eight hundred years ago.
This exhibition shows their culture through their visual
arts. Since they came from East Asia and lived in other places for such a long
time, we can expect a mixture of traditions. In fact, their cultures borrowed
selectively from foreign sources, especially for those objects in last two
hundred years. They explicitly reflect a variety of such accumulated influences.
They considered sea as a basic feature of their life, it also represents the
highest technology they can achieve at that time. The Both spars are sprits -- there is
no mast on this rig and both sprits hold up only a corner of the rectangular
sail.
The design helps to reduce wind and waves when sailing. For the textile in
the exhibition, it was cleverly made of beadwork. In the drinking cup shows
below, we can see the religious pattern made up by the beads. This is not only
beautiful but easy to carry with net structure on the top and a loop to handle.
And in the big cloth hanging at the entrance shows the combination of different
cultures, the technology for making such a huge art pieces must be very mature
at that time.
the boat at the middle of the exhibition
the ceremonial cup
the textile
I highly recommend this exhibition because it shows
us the advanced technology for sailing and spinning of Austronesians at the
early time and their cultures. It gives us a change to see a totally different
world and I really enjoy it.
me at Hammer Museum
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