Bangkok (The Nation/ANN) - Unlike other Western powers that came into contact with Siam, Portugal was never a threat to our sovereignty but more into trading spice. When Ayutthaya was razed by the Burmese in 1767 Westerners quit the burning city en masse, but the Portuguese stayed. Fast forward through the centuries and the friendship between Thailand and Portugal remains especially warm even as it counts off 500 years.
"Masks of Asia", currently underway at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, celebrates that half-millennium anniversary and reveals the depth of Portugal's fascination with the many-faced East.
"Here we've moved our focus to vast Asia, from the angle of this unique cultural expression. Masks are not only striking and beautiful objects in themselves but carry layers of meaning related to their use in ceremonies, in rites or in performances," explained Portuguese Ambassador Jorge Torres-Pereira at the exhibition's launch party, presided over by Culture Minister Sukumol Kunplome.
The exhibits have been flown in from the famous 10,000-strong Kwok On Collection at the Orient Foundation Museum in Lisbon. On display at the Arts and Culture Centre are 250 masks from eight countries: Japan, China, Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tibet and India.
Utilising diverse materials - from papier-mache and textile to wood, animal skin and brass - the masks bring together a who's who of Asian icons from the real and mythical world. A Demon Queen eyes up a Master of the Graveyards; gods, ascetics and kings vie for your attention with clowns and naga. All are fantastic characters from Asia's folklore, and central to its religious and secular theatre.
These archetypes of the Asian unconscious are relatively new to the Western eye. It was masks from their colonies in Africa and Oceania that first inspired European artists and collectors, as they were used for anthropological study of indigenous peoples. That changed in 2007 when the Kwok On Collection arrived in Brittany, France for the first major display of Asian masks in the West.
The Portuguese or Western interest in the masks centres on their function and symbolism as a gateway to understanding Asia's mysterious indigenous cultures.
The masks speak of cultures steeped in ceremonial and social symbolism. They reveal a rich and varied tapestry of Asian mythology that reflects both social hierarchies and the love of caricature and oral tradition.
Their function is usually to give a face to either divine or diabolical beings that are brought to life in rites and performances. But these cosmic characters are also recognisably social types, highlighted through the caricatured facial features of the kolam (masked dance) of Sri Lanka, the humour of Korean theatre and in Japanese processions. The masks are used both in religious ceremonies, especially in exorcism rites, and in theatrical performances where the representations are more human, stripped of overt religious meaning.
In Sri Lanka, for instance, there are two types of masks: one utilised during exorcism rites, and the other in kolam - a form of religious dance-theatre. Glaring down at visitors in Bangkok is the cobra-wreathed visor through which the exorcist establishes his dialogue with the demon, cajoling it in a humorous dance to ensure the demon submits.
From Tibet come the leather masks of a folk opera called lhamo, which bring to life characters from ancient folklore and Buddhist teaching for villagers and townsfolk.
Our own love affair with masks stares out from the faces of khon characters, whose glittering dance has enchanted generation after generation of Thais with its epic tale of the Ramakien.
But if the exhibition has an expression of its own, it's a frown: these Asian masks have not yet attracted the level of attention they deserve, it argues. Collectors now see masks as lifeless antiques, ignoring the fact that they were originally created to serve communities in lively rites and performances. Valued now as antiques, their human meaning is more often than not overlooked.
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