The cultural legacy of the western Himalaya
23/10/2010 to 1.5. 2011 Linden-Museum Stuttgart
(Press release Lindenmuseum) Worldwide first is the western Himalayas, a melting pot of cultures, in this co-operation of the Linden-Museum Stuttgart, the Historical and Ethnographic Museum, St. Gallen and the Ethnological Museum Herrnhut in focus an exhibition. The Western Himalaya is one of the impressive high mountain regions of the world, vast deserts interspersed with dense forest and 7,000 meters high snow peaks. The region is a melting pot of cultures that have preserved due to the remoteness of their unique originality for millennia. On major trade routes philosophical ideas, religious and artistic styles were disseminated. Hinduism and Buddhism intermingle here with age-old belief in spirits and the worship of fertility goddesses. The Western Himalaya is one of the last refuges of Tibetan Buddhism, is preserved in the monasteries in Tibet nearly destroyed cultural heritage yet.
Politically, the region is now among the Indian states Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, but already one of the first European who visited the area, August Hermann Francke, spoke of "India's Tibet" to highlight the influence of India in the early Tibetan Buddhism in the western Himalayas. Tibetan scholars went to India to be introduced to the teachings of Indian Buddhism, Indian Sanskrit texts were translated into Tibetan before in India itself - due to the Muslim invaders - were lost. From this network developed some of the most beautiful styles of Buddhist art, created by Indian artists, the Tibetan monasteries of the West Himalaya embellished. Nowadays it is natural designate the region as "Tibet's India," but it provides refuge for thousands of Tibetan refugees and their living religious tradition.
The exhibition focuses on three research trips, their stations are run in the exhibition. In 1909, went the German archaeologist August Hermann Francke on a 2000 km long, at that time very dangerous expedition through the western Himalayas. For the first time in history, he stopped and his photographer, Babu Lal Pindi the bizarre landscape and the fascinating culture of this region in word and image. The Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer (Seven Years in Tibet ") durchwanderte1944 adventurous in his flight Tibet after the region and visited again in the 1970s, the Ladakh and Zanskar regions in order to document the Tibetan culture.
Due to political circumstances was the Western Himalayas to the access stranger long time denied. Only at the end of the 20th Century the area became a limited number of travelers re-opened in parts. This has taken the Frankfurt author and photographer Peter van Ham as an opportunity to follow in several over the last twenty years distributed expeditions in the footsteps Francke and Harrer in the mountain deserts of Kinnaur, Spiti, Lahaul, Rupshu, Nubra, Zanskar and Ladakh.
The exhibition takes the visitor in the footsteps of explorers in an "external" or "physical" journey from Shimla by the regions of Kinnaur, Spiti, and Ladakh Rupshu / Zanskar. At the same time there is an "inner" or "spiritual" journey to religious art of Hinduism, Buddhism and animism. The highlight and finale of the exhibition is a walk-Mandala, which is modeled on an interior of the monastery of Tabo in Spiti, and the monastic life of the western Himalaya experience makes.
be Presented textiles and jewelry, bronze sculptures of Hindu and Buddhist ritual objects, thangka paintings, dance masks. Large-scale historical and contemporary images, and multimedia installations immerse visitors into a fascinating region.
Photo: Walk-mandala. Edwin Wall
0 comments:
Post a Comment