22.08.08—17.05.09 (➞Museum der Kulturen. Basel.)
Until a few years ago, the territory of the Naga people in the border area of Northeast India and Myanmar (Burma) appeared as a blank spot on Western world maps. Today, after having been sealed off for many years, travellers are allowed back into the area which became the federal state Nagaland in 1963. Against this background the Museum der Kulturen now sheds light on the aesthetically exceptional cultural heritage of this people in a special exhibition. For the first time select pieces from Naga collections that were assembled over the last 120 years by the museums in Berlin, Munich and Basel are being shown to the public.
The Naga people, who number approximately 30 different ethnic groups, live in a mountainous region on the border between Northeast India and Myanmar (Burma). Once, they used to be feared as fierce warriors, even resisting British colonial rule tenaciously for a long time. Not only anthropologists and travellers but also colonial administrators were fascinated by this proud and status-conscious culture with its elaborate feasts of merit and its practice of head-hunting.
FASCINATING AESTHETICS
Their spectacular ritual life, a complex social organisation and the artistic and aesthetic appeal of Naga material culture soon attracted the attention of European anthropologists and collectors who, in the course of the years to come, were commissioned by various European museums to travel to India and acquire extensive collections on Naga material culture.
CULTURE IN A FORBIDDEN ZONE
And then, suddenly, contact to the Naga broke off. What had happened? Immediately after India gained independence in 1947 Naga territory was closed and declared a military zone. The Naga remained sealed off from the rest of the world for more than fifty years and foreign visitors were not allowed to travel to the area. This did not change even when Nagaland became an official Indian federal state in 1963.
SEARCH FOR IDENTITY
It was only in the year 2000 that the Indian part of Naga territory was reopened to visitors. However, long years of British colonial rule, Christian proselytization by American Baptist missionaries and forced incorporation into the Indian state have left clear marks on the Naga people: the political situation in Nagaland remains highly volatile, and pervasive cultural change — today more than 90 percent of the Naga population are confessed Christians — has forced the approximately two million Naga living in the federal states of Northeast India and their roughly 100,000 kinsmen in Burma to seek and adopt a new, modern form of cultural identity.
NEWLY DISCOVERED COLLECTIONS
Against this background the Museum der Kulturen is putting on an exhibition that provides the opportunity to rediscover the cultural heritage of the Naga people. The show presents collections from the Ethnologische Museum in Berlin, the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich and the Museum der Kulturen Basel, which were assembled between the late 1870s and the early 1990s and have never been on display before.
ART INTERVENTION
The exhibition also hosts works by the Zurich-based artist Cristina Fessler from her work cycle «Nagaland-Transfer 1992—2008». Her artworks enter into an exciting dialogue with the Naga pieces on show.
Here is the exact address which leads you directly to the English section of the Naga-Website: http://www.mkb.ch/sonderausstellungen/naga/en/index.php
From there you will find all kinds of information on the exhibit, the publication and the event programme. Detailed information is in the 'MEDIA' section in the form of downloadable pdf documents and field photographs.
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