Publication:
Wooden Funeral Sculptures of the Jrai and Bahnar in the Vietnam Central Highlands: Conservation or Destruction?
Wooden Funeral Sculptures of the Jrai and Bahnar in the Vietnam Central Highlands: Conservation or Destruction?
No Thumbnail Available
Files
Date
2021
Authors
Hồ Thị Thanh Nhàn
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
The wooden funeral sculptures of the Jrai and Bahnar in the Vietnam Central Highlands have been introduced to the world in many ethnographic studies since the early twentieth century by French researchers. For many reasons, there was a dearth of Vietnamese studies in this region not only during the French colonial period (1887–1954) but also in the Vietnam War (1954–1975) and throughout a decade after that. Except for a rare but major study conducted by the new government from 1986 to 1995 on various fields for exploiting local potentials and left a lot of valuable historical documents, the research gap on this topic continues to last until 2017. At the end of a 2-year research project since 2015, a report published by the local cultural agency showed that the art of wooden sculptures here was being recovered and well-developed. Although the number of new sculptures has increased recently as mentioned in the report, most of them seem very different from traditional sculptures in many respects. Through a comparative analysis of historical documents and fieldwork, this paper aims to point out the differences and identify the main characteristics that should not be confused between traditional wooden funeral sculptures and wooden artworks nowadays.
Description
Keywords
"Jrai,
Bahnar,
Funeral sculpture,
Vietnam Central Highlands"