Five hundred haute couture textiles and costumes — some that took four years to fashion — from the exhibition “Writing with Thread: Traditional Textiles of Southwest Chinese Minorities” have been painstaking planned and packed into three galleries within the Chazen Museum of Art. The exhibition offers a visually stimulating experience with silver headdresses half the size and weight of its former owners and a plethora of rainbow colors admixed on pleated skirts. On a more somber note, the pieces are propped upon blood-red displays that foster awareness about the rapidly disappearing Southwest Chinese ethic groups that are falling victim to fires, the allure of city life for young adults and rising infrastructure that exposes these concealed mountainous villages to the destructive force that is tourism.
The journey to bring this exhibition to Madison started with visits to nestled Southwest Chinese villages. Over a period of 20 years, Yin Feng Huang — director of the Evergrand Museum in Taiwan — amassed a collection of 10,000 pieces. The collective effort from the University of Hawaii at M?noa Art Gallery’s Director Emeritus Tom Klobe and curator Angela Shen from the McMaster University in Canada followed Huang’s suit, exploring indigenous Southwest China to help Huang facilitate the understanding of each piece and the organization of the exhibit.
Although, for obvious geographical reasons, it would be perverse to hint that their embroidery technique is mimicry of Pointillism — or visa versa — the relationship between the two forms (minus the differing utensils and materials used to express their art) is uncanny. Both techniques assemble the total picture using the sum of many distinct points. An unflattering boxy silhouette is enlivened by strategically juxtaposed colors without distracting the eye. Hues of fiery reds, pinks and yellows offset the cold blues, violets and greens. Serpentine designs are carefully arranged using hundreds of minute, finger-intensive double knots that collectively create a single palm-sized design. Heavy, coiling, monotone silver accessories offer a break from the illusion of a uniform arrangement. Beauty was the apparent feature that decided the fate of whether a piece made it into the collection. “The collection comes mostly from the Miao (Hmong) people because they have the most beautiful costumes,” Ying Feng Huang said. “The embroidery reflects the free-flowing expression that can be done with thread, and the Miao people were the best at that.”
Bringing these complex handcrafted garments to life is a laborious process. Thickening the threads and recalling more than 30 embroidery techniques only breaks the surface of the patient, exhausting steps and a lifetime of dedication that prepare Southwest Chinese aborigine to recreate their history on silk in lieu of paper. Hands of the designers are callous — evidence that textile replaces paper, needles substitute pens and thread replaces ink. Without written records only 6,000-year-old oral traditions remain, immortalizing their history and aiding their embroidery practices. “They sing these songs while they weave or loom because it guides them to create the fish pattern or butterfly patterns and to remember their history,” Huang said.
At the start of the preview lecture on Friday’s opening night, all eyes were fixed on Huang’s back, towered by the chalkboard’s green backdrop as he sketched a rough, toilet-sized silhouette, sparking a mumble by one perplexed audience member. “Is that a bloated whale?” Huang, glided his hand southeast, delineating a bullet-sized oval and began the pre-preview lecture by pointing to the whale announcing, “This is China.” Then he pointed to the bullet. “This is Taiwan, my homeland.” He circled the whale’s underbelly. “This is where I go to collect my pieces.”
The fragile Southwest Chinese ethnic groups face a possible extinction of their culture. Likewise, Taiwan faced similar pressure under Japanese control some 70 years ago. Today, the Japanese museums house the majority of the Taiwanese aborigine culture. Motivated by his beloved country’s history, Huang hopes to stop any more of the Southwest Chinese’s ethnic culture from being relegated to glass cases. With an influx of tourists and patternmakers from cities who travel to these remote villages to purchase and cut up these pieces, he is persistent in what seems to be a losing battle.
At the end of the preview lecture, Huang pointed to a dull red, ornately embroidered strip of silk –a piece of a torn garment given to him by a villager — stitched from the neckline straight down to the chest of a brown factory-made sweater, and in a somber tone said, “This is what those [patternmakers] are doing.” The audience gasped. With the historical beauty of these garments comes the truth that they are neglected and destroyed today. “Writing with Thread” provides an insight into the culture and skill of Southwest China.
“Writing with Thread: Traditional Textiles from Southwest Chinese Minorities” is at the Chazen Museum of Art through April 12 in Brittingham Galleries V, VI, VII
