Asian Art and Calligraphy

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Sisyu + teamLab, "What a Loving, and Beautiful World," 2011

interactive digital installation (calligraphy by Sisyu, sound by Hideaki Takahashi) Courtesy of the artists and Pace Gallery

Calligraphy, the art of fine writing, is more than beautiful penmanship. This is especially true in Asia, with its great diversity of languages. Chinese, for instance, with characters that number in the tens of thousands, elevates the act of writing to more than mere communication – it becomes an aesthetic process. The blending of characters and images is also common in Asia, where words are combined with other visual elements to add greater experiential dimensions.

These ideas are explored in Traces of Words: Art and Calligraphy from Asia, on view at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver from May 11 to Oct. 9. The title is explained in an essay by the curator, Fuyubi Nakamura, who says the show’s theme is “physical traces of time and space” both ephemeral and eternal to human life. “We leave traces of ourselves throughout life, be they visible or invisible,” she writes in the exhibition essay. “Words, whether spoken, written, imagined or visualized, are traces unique to humans. Some words disappear, while others remain only in memory or leave physical traces as writing or text.”

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Leaf from a Qur’an manuscript in Kufic script, possibly Iraq, Iran or Syria, 9th century

vellum and ink, 9.3" x 12.8" (2988/1)

The museum holds a rich collection of some 250 calligraphic artifacts. More than 90 will be on display at the museum and across campus at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The offsite venue is a collaboration between the museum and UBC’s library, which holds one of the few major collections of historic Asian books and manuscripts outside of Asia. Included in the various exhibits are such items as illuminated religious texts from Asia and the Middle East, palm-leaf manuscripts from Southeast Asia, calligraphic tools such as brushes and inkpots, and artifacts with inscriptions, such as a 19th century brass and enamel incense burner. One of the oldest artifacts is a stamped brick that dates back more than 4,000 years.

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Kimura Tsubasa, "Outline," 2007

sumi ink on faille fabric, 4' x 23' each, courtesy of the artist, photo by Fuyubi Nakamura

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Phaptawan Suwannakudt, "Three Worlds 9," 2009

acrylic on canvas, 53" x 25.6" courtesy of the artist

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Nakamura’s reach goes well beyond the historical. She also delves into contemporary fusions of art and words, and multimedia and digital representations. For this, she tapped into works from six international artists: Shamsia Hassani, Kimura Tsubasa, Nortse, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Yugami Hisao and teamLab. The latter is an experimental interdisciplinary collective formed in Japan in 2001 that refers to themselves as ultra-technologists. Their 2011 interactive digital installation, What a Loving, and Beautiful World, is 360-degree, computer-generated projection that lights up the walls of the gallery. When the shadow of a museum visitor touches one of the projected characters, the world of that character comes to life and new events occur in real time. For example, if a visitor sees wind blowing, the object activated by the shadow will react to the wind. The worlds created are complex and dynamic, and as in nature, no two moments are repeated.

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Shamsia Hassani, "What About the Dead Fish?" 2011

paint on the ruins of Russian Cultural Centre, Kabul, courtesy of the artist

One of the most courageous artists in the show is Hassani, regarded as Afghanistan’s first female graffiti artist. Not yet 30, she spray paints over structures ravaged by war in her home city of Kabul, hoping to foster positive change. Her work often depicts fish or women in burkas. Given the suppression of women in many parts of Afghanistan, Hassani often cannot visit sites that interest her. Instead, she creates what she calls “dreaming graffiti” by painting on photos of places she would like to visit. Several of Hassani’s photo-based works are in the show, including Dreaming Graffiti – Words (2012), which shows a bombed-out crater in front of a row of houses. What About the Dead Fish? (2011) is an image of a spray-painted burka-clad woman who appears to be seated on steps near a wall pockmarked by warfare. The text reads: “The water can come back to a dried-up river, but what about the fish that died?”

Hassani often uses text in her own Dari alphabet and language. “In my works, most of the shapes and images are drawn from my own mental alphabet, as that could be considered as a kind of writing,” she writes. “Some of these ‘words’ are there just to be seen, not to be spoken or read. The meaning of a word is different from the shape of a word, yet an artist can use images to reveal meaning more directly. Artworks are able to speak to people in different languages – that is the magic of art.”

Meanwhile, Nortse, born in Lhasa, Tibet, in 1963, creates mixed media works that combine forms and imagery from traditional Tibetan culture to address issues such as environmental degradation, global warming and the erosion of tradition and language. His Book of Ashes, a 2015 installation with over 40 pieces, refers to the devastation wreaked upon Tibetan Buddhism, particularly during China’s Cultural Revolution. “A memory of my childhood is a scene with burnt books and broken Buddhist statues abandoned everywhere on the ground,” he writes.

Who knew that art and calligraphy could be so inclusive? From the exhilarating projections of teamLab to the searing images of Hassani and Nortse, the depth and breadth of calligraphy is, as Nakamura says, “woven into the fabric of everyday life.”