28.04.2025 14.05., 18:00 Uhr: Dr. Valentina Gamberi: Displaying but not revealing: assessing Chinese deconsecration rituals within museum collections
Vortrag
This presentation will illustrate deconsecration rituals in Chinese folk religion as a way to reconsider curatorial practice towards Chinese religious collections in European museums. Deconsecration rituals in Taiwan are extremely sensitive, borderline with taboo and often intersecting with emotional burdens related to family dynamics and inheritance. However, understanding whether, how and when a Chinese god statue that is part of a museum collection is deconsecrated is crucial. Identifying deconsecration can reveal the circumstances of collecting and displaying in artefacts' provenance research. Deconsecration or practices directly or indirectly related to it can “repair” colonial collections. Through them, we can design new conservation methods or represent complex layers of Chinese religion. The need for clarification, from a curatorial point of view, contrasts with the local need not to disclose this practice.
In this presentation, I will elucidate my difficulties in negotiating between the two instances and accessing the field, an Italian missionary museum, on the one hand, and Taiwanese temples, on the other hand. I will additionally reflect on the collection of the Museum of Religions in Marburg, particularly a Buddha’s head and hand on which I base my research during this short visiting period. The presentation will introduce, in the end, a preliminary curatorial proposal derived from my postdoctoral research that addresses the tension between displaying and disguising deconsecration rituals.
Termin: Mittwoch, 14.05.2025, 18:00 Uhr
Ort: Landgraf-Philipp-Str. 4, 35037 Marburg