“Traces of Guanyin” is a research journey undertaken by the anthropologist Valentina Gamberi. It starts with Chinese folk religious statues that present hollows in their backs in the collections of the Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography in Parma and the Religionskundliche Sammlung of Philipps-University Marburg. The two museums were inaugurated in the 20th century and were part of or connected to Catholic and Protestan missionary collecting. How and by whom were these statues hollowed? In Chinese folk religion—practised by the Han and Hakka ethnicities in China, Taiwan, and other areas in Southeast and East Asia—ritual specialists introduce sacred substances into a cavity carved into the back of the statues to reinforce the power of the gods. Clearing these substances from the statues’ cavities is therefore part of a process of deconsecration that establishes their afterlives as collectable artefacts. Unsealing the statues’ hollows is ambiguous: it could reflect local knowledge for spiritually protecting collectors and previous owners from bad luck, but it could also be part of a process of religious conversion and, therefore, iconoclasm. Through a combination of ethnography in contemporary Taiwan and archival research, “Traces of Guanyin” highlights the importance of negotiating local, conflicting views on the treatment of sacred artefacts. The exhibition decenters Valentina’s narrative by bringing in other voices and experiences from fieldwork—her friend, Chang Yuhua, and the contemporary artist Peng Hung-Chih. It acknowledges that collecting these objects is inherently problematic. You are welcome to explore the virtual exhibition.
Acknowledgments
This exhibition is part of the research project “Processual Decay Paradigm”, funded by the OP JAC Project “MSCA Fellowships at Palacký University II.” CZ.02.01.01/00/22_010/0006945 and based at the Palacký University Olomouc. Valentina Gamberi would like to thank Yuhua Chang and Hung-Chih Peng for their active contributions to the exhibit’s realisation. A huge thanks to the director Yu-Chih Kao, the Tudigong Museum in Taoyuan, the Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography of the Xaverian missionaries in Parma (Italy) and his curator Maurizio Salvarani, the Religionskundliche Sammlung of the Philipps-University Marburg and the conservator Heike Luu for allowing Valentina to use pictures from their artwork and collections. Valentina also thanks Ms. Anting Cheng and Ms. Yinrui Su for their help during the field visit, Xiping Cai for proofreading the Chinese text, and Cuiying Sheng for checking the religious terminology used.
Last but not least, Valentina is grateful for the fieldwork informants, in particular the committee members of Daitian Gong temple in Keelung, Daoist priests Lin Abing (林阿秉), Zhu Fugui (朱富貴), and Zhang Wenzhen (張文政), as well as woodcarver Chen Zongwei (陳宗蔚), for allowing the publication of pictures of them and their activities in this exhibition.