Javanese Shadow Theatre: Stories about Life and the World at Museum Rietberg
Javanese Shadow Theatre
Stories about Life and the World
May 30, 2020 — November 29, 2020
The Wayang kulit shadow play is one of the oldest existing theatre traditions in Asia. The exhibition presents for the first time the significant collection of Tina and Paul Stohler, featuring precious and striking figures of gods, spirits, and ancestors. The exhibition focuses on the stories the figures have to tell about heroes and demons, morals and virtues, and the deeper meaning of life.
The term wayang carries the words yang, eyang, or hyang which all mean ancestor or deity. Kulit means “skin”, the material the figures are made out of. Thus, a literal translation of the term Wayang kulit would be the theatre in which the immortalized ancestors and deities appear in the shape of figures made of skin.
The origins of Wayang kulit remain in the dark to this day; it was first mentioned in a javanese poem from the 12th century but it is presumably older than that and emerged in connection with other, similar Asian forms of theatre. We are dealing with a tradition which is of great significance in Java up to this day. The intent and purpose of each and every play is to provide the audience with entertaining, spiritual-moral, historical-political insight and education – at the same time, the emphasis is clearly on the aspect of entertainment.
With the exception of the major Angkor exhibition in 2007, the art of Southeast Asia has not featured prominently at the Rietberg Museum in recent years. This was to change in 2016 when the wife of the late collector Paul Stohler, Tina Stohler, donated the significant collection of Javanese shadow play figures her husband had assembled to the museum. The figures are now presented to the general public for the first time in an exhibition, along with selected pieces from the ethnographic museums in Zurich and Burgdorf.
Watch the trailer for Javanese Shadow Theatre: Stories about Life and the World.
