Why rice? According to Fowler Museum of Cultural History curator
Roy Hamilton, the starchy grain is the one commonality on a
continent that makes no sense as a single unit.
“The word “˜Asia’ is really an artificial
construct,” Hamilton said. “Even in terms of geography,
Asia is not one lump. The Himalayas cut across it. Indonesia is
mostly islands. It turns out that rice is something that’s
common to all of these cultures.”
Hamilton, who supervises the museum’s Asian and Pacific
collections, is the curator of an ambitious visual arts exhibition,
“The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia.” The
exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures, ceramics,
architecture, textiles, puppets and ritual paraphernalia from a
total of 13 Pan-Asian countries. Six years in the making, the
showcase is on display from Oct. 5 until April 25 at UCLA’s
Fowler Museum. Many of the visual arts inspired the Art of Rice
Traveling Theater, an upcoming event created by the Center for
Intercultural Performance.
Hamilton’s fascination with rice started with his research
in Indonesia, seeing not only how rice is a part of everyday life
in terms of food, but also how it fits into cultural practices and
even religious beliefs. He began to notice that other Asian
countries shared the same relationship with rice.
“Despite all the different religions in all the different
Asian countries ““ India is primarily Hindu, Thailand is
Buddhist, Indonesia is mostly Muslim, and the Philippines is
Catholic ““ these ideas about rice are present in all of these
countries.”
More than 200 objects either come from the Fowler Museum or are
loaned from collections across the globe. One section of the
exhibition features alternative utilities of rice, such as a pair
of Japanese snow boots made from rice straws. A “festival
theater” will be showing video footage of Asian rice
festivals like the celebration of the new harvest at a Buddhist
monastery in Thailand.
“The exhibition is organized thematically,” Hamilton
said. “There’s a series of themes having to do with the
agricultural cycle, the granary, the deities for rice and so on.
What we do is look for objects that address those subjects. We
purposely tried to jumble together different kinds of objects from
different countries so that people can explore those
connections.”
The primary point of the exhibition is for the non-Asian
audience to learn about the tremendous wealth of culture in Asia.
However, Hamilton also sees it as a chance for students of
different Asian countries to discover similarities. They might find
out that in many Asian languages, the words for “food”
and “meal” are synonymous with the word for
“rice.”
“We have a huge population of students who are
Asian,” Hamilton said. “There will also be a lot
curiosity on the part of students with Asian background(s) to learn
about their heritage. Also, I think it’s valid for students
from one Asian background to learn more about students from another
Asian background.”