[Tlc] Press Release Weaving Paradise Textile Exhibition

[Linda McIntosh]

Please find attached the press release for the textile exhibit,
'Weaving Paradise: Sooutheast Asian Textiles and their Creators,' held
at the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok.  The exhibit features
textiles of the Tai, Khmer, Cham, Malay, and Burmese.

Best regards,
Linda McIntosh

The Jim Thompson Art Center
presents

"Weaving Paradise"
Southeast Asian Textiles and their Creators

Exhibition period: November 3rd 2007 – January 31st 2008
Venue: The Jim Thompson Art Center
Opening ceremony: Friday, November 2nd 2007 from 18:30 p.m. onwards
(Admission free of charge)

Curator: Linda McIntosh
Artists in the exhibition: Wattana Wattanapun, Paiwarin Khao-ngam
Textiles in the exhibition: Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection
Exhibition designer: Pachara Pitipanich


Press Release

The Jim Thompson Art Center is delighted to announce a colorful new
exhibition, Weaving Paradise: Southeast Asian Textiles and their
Creators.  Opening on 3 November 2007, the show by Curator Linda S.
McIntosh will highlight woven creations from Tai (including Thai and
Lao), Khmer, Cham, Burmese, and Malay cultures. All of the
twenty-eight exquisite pieces in the exhibition sponsored by The James
H.W. Thompson Foundation will be on loan from the Tilleke & Gibbins
Textile Collection, one of Bangkok's finest private collections of
Southeast Asian textiles.

Weaving Paradise focuses on the common thread that links the diverse
cultures of Southeast Asia, where women are the primary producers of
cloth. The exhibition celebrates women's creativity and their
traditional social roles. Metaphorical references of women and weaving
found in the exhibition illustrate ideal female characteristics and
women's dedication to the present and the future: making cloth as
gifts and offerings and as conduits to reach a better world after
death. Women weave affection, hope, time, space, ritual, and, lastly,
paradise into cloth's warp and weft, weaving the fabric of society.

Visually striking in their composition, design, materials, and color
Southeast Asian textiles are highly regarded for their beauty.
Traditional societies value weavers for their advanced technical
skills and devotion required for textile production. Numerous literary
forms refer to weaving skills to assess a "good" woman, especially a
nurturing wife and mother, but the also describe women's intentions to
create cloth as symbols of love for their parents, husbands, children,
and members of their community.

The exhibit begins with a selection of elaborately decorated skirts
from different Tai groups.  For the shamanic Tai, a joyous reunion
with ancestors occurs at death in a Land of Golden Mangoes.  Weavers
decorate their clothing with images of lanterns, offerings, and trees
of life that assist in the journey to the afterworld.  Examples of
Khmer artistry are found in the crimson red silks, composing pictorial
hangings with Buddhist content, which exemplify laywomen's devotion to
Buddhism.  Mothers also make elaborately designed fabrics, symbolizing
their love and pride for their sons' sacrifice when they give up the
material world to become monks.

As well as belonging to the same language family, the Malay and Cham
peoples, whose early maritime trade kingdoms upheld Hinduism before
adopting Islam, share numerous characteristics.  Their fabrics abound
with metaphorical references to adat, a traditional code of conduct.
The wavy patterns embody water but also the Naga serpent deity, an
important creature in all Southeast Asian cultures.  The Naga also
symbolizes the rainbow, and both serve as ladders between earth and
heaven. Water is a recurring theme in the undulating lines of Burmese
tapestries that signify the Irawaddy River.

Curator Linda McIntosh has formally researched Southeast Asian
textiles, specializing in Thai and Lao fabrics, for over ten years.
She grew up listening to the repetitious beats of her Lao mother's
loom and first learned how to weave from her mother at the age of six.
Linda researched textiles of the various Tai groups of Thailand for
her Master's degree in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of
Wisconsin, and is currently finishing her doctorate on Phuthai
textiles from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Field research has led
her to collect data not only in Thailand and Laos but also in Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Myanmar. Her endeavors have assisted in the opening of a
private ethnology museum in Luang Prabang, Laos, and she has consulted
on several development projects in her mother's country. Her last
exhibition at the Jim Thompson Art Center, "Status, Myth and the
Supernatural: Ritual Tai Textiles," was held in 2005. She hopes to
support the tradition of hand-woven textiles through her works and
continues to consult on developing projects in Laos.

Works of Thai artist Wattana Wattanaphun and Thai poet Paiwarin
Khao-ngam accompany the exhibit, highlighting women as the producers
of cloth embedded with meaning. Performance by an international
artist, Dr. Zulkifli Mohamad, will complement the exhibit. Dr. Mohamad
will give a presentation on Malay textiles, and SEA WRITE and Fukuoka
Art and Culture Laureate Douangdueane Bounyavong will lecture on
textiles and Lao women.


For further information please contact

Khun Penwadee, Exhibition Coordinator
Tel. 084-709-3440
Email: penwadee at jimthompsonhouse.com

Khun Somsuda, Education Program Coordinator
Tel. 081-409-7680
Email: somsuda at jimthompsonhouse.com

The Jim Thompson Art Center
(2nd floor, The Jim Thompson House compound)
Office Hours : 9 – 5 pm. Daily

The Jim Thompson Art Center office
(4th floor, Henry B. Thompson building, behind the Jim Thompson
House's parking area)
Tel: 02-612-6741
Tel/Fax: 02-219-2911
Email: artcenter at jimthompsonhouse.com
Office Hours: 11:00 a.m. - 8 p.m. daily

Address & Access:
6 Soi Kasemsan 2, Rama I Rd., Wangmai, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330
(BTS: National Stadium Station)
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