THE LAST OF THE KALASH
Lyon—Fêtes himalayennes, les derniers Kalash (Himalayan
Musée des Confl uences through December 1, 2019, lifts
the veil on some of the least-known people of Pakistan
with a fi rst-of-its-kind exhibition in a French museum.
Thanks to the work done in the second half of the twentieth
Lyon, the exhibition presents the beliefs and customs of
the Kalash, a community of 3,000 people who inhabit an
isolated mountainous region and who live and function
in ways that are opposite to those we know in our consumerist
as they explored an intersection of worlds and religions
and discovered religious practices previously unknown
to the outside world: a world populated by benefi cent
fairies called suchi and characterized by ritual ceremonies
34
I AM THE OTHER
Rome—Two renowned European institutions—the Museo
Nazionale Romano and the Museo delle Culture di
Lugano—have combined their resources this fall to produce
an exceptional exhibition in the Eternal City that
will feature eighty masterpieces of twentieth-century
modern sculpture and of African and Oceanic art, as well
as a selection of Pre-Columbian works. Titled Je suis l’autre:
Giacometti, Picasso e gli altri. Il Primitivismo nella
scultura del Novecento (I Am the Other: Giacometti,
Picasso, and the Others. Primitivism in Twentieth-Century
Sculpture), the exhibition features works by Picasso,
Giacometti, Derain, Braque, Dubuffet, and Klein, among
others, all of whom found their inspiration in art nègre,
masterpieces of which are juxtaposed with these European
sculptures. The exhibition focuses on recreating
the personal, internal, and artistic quests of the twentieth
century Western artists who encountered these arts,
and it examines the innovative forms they produced
and their capacity for both material and conceptual
synthesis. Western artists could only envy the qualities
they found in non-Western sculpture, which
were exactly what they were looking for as they
strove to free themselves from existing academic
constraints. African and Oceanic artworks
were hailed as a true liberation, and this
is the primary point that the exhibition
seeks to demonstrate. It will be on
view through January 20, 2019, in
the monumental galleries of the
Baths of Diocletian.
MUSEUM NEWS
ABOVE: Reliquary guardian
fi gure gardienne. Fang-Mvai,
Gabon. Late 19th century.
Wood. H: 38 cm.
Private collection, Bergamo.
ABOVE RIGHT: Chibinda
Ilunga fi gure, attributed to a
master of the Moxico School.
Tshokwe, Angola. Late 19th
century.
Wood, hair, iron. H: 40 cm.
Museu de Historia Natural e da Ciéncia
da Universidade do Porto.
Festivals: The Last of the Kalash), on view at the
century by two researchers and photographers from
society. It relates the story of these researchers
honoring the gods and celebrating
ABOVE: Funerary equestrian fi gure, gundurik.
Chitral, Pakistan. 20th century.
Jean-Yves Loude and Viviane Lièvre Collection.
Photo © Olivier Garcin, Musée des Confl uences.
RIGHT: Headdress.
Kalash, Pakistan.
Gift of Frédérique Vayssac.
Photo © Olivier Garcin, Musée des Confl uences.
the generosity of the
Great Men. This universe gives
rise to an art that is replete with
symbolism, such as a two-headed
equestrian fi gure, who rewards
the most generous men, and a
rich textile tradition maintained
by women. The non-material culture
is also vast: The language is
unique, ancestral rites are highly
codifi ed and dictated by the deities,
and shamans are ubiquitous
and omnipresent. Kalash life is
fi lled with spirituality, refl ecting
their struggle to survive in
a harsh and restrictive climate.
This exhibition demonstrates
once again the extent to which museums are the repositories
for human memory, both material and immaterial.
It shows how a reclusive society gradually
adapted to the outside world, how its rites altered due to
pressures from external religions such as Islam, and how
a people maintains its identity as it strives to conform to
the established codes of modern life.