Curated by Michael Schuster, Ph.D., assisted by Anna Reynolds
Installation design by Lynne Najita
East-West Center Gallery, Burns Hall, 1601 East-West Rd., Honolulu, HI, USA
11 April 2010 – 13 June 2010
Weddings are the pinnacle of celebration, festivity, and happiness throughout Asia. People place a huge emphasis on the rituals, processions, feasts, and gatherings associated with these felicitous events in the human life cycle. More than an event uniting two individuals, weddings are a social enactment reinforcing community, family, and continuity. Imbued with both spiritual and practical implications, the wedding events are central to the social fabric and are intended to encourage the couple’s fertility.
This EWC exhibition focuses on garments/costumes, ritual objects, theatrical and artistics representations of wedding events, and dowry items including textiles and jewelry. Due to the enormity of the region with its wide diversity of ethnicities, religions, and sub-cultures, a few representative cultures have been selected to represent East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. In all regions, people devote extraordinary resources, energy, and time to creating memorable wedding celebrations.
This exhibition was created in honor of the East-West Center’s golden 50th anniversary celebration. Likewise, many of the weddings found in Asia are festooned with golden textiles, jewelery, and accoutrements.
The exhibited artifacts and photographs depict wedding traditions from China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Burma/Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan.
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