Enchanting Winter Museum "LOVE": Sweet Nothings of Devas”

This winter, the FAAM, the Fukuoka Art Museum, and the Fukuoka City Museum are simultaneously hosting an exhibition with a single theme, a new initiative for all three institutes. This year the joint project initiates with the theme of “LOVE.”  The exhibition is stated for winter, when Asia’s goddesses are sure to appear any needs for intimacy and warmth at FAAM.

The first part of the exhibition “Devas! Devas!” introduces various Hindu and Buddhist goddesses from South Asia.  Together with lovesome goddesses, such as Lakshmi the goddess of wealth and fortune and Sarasvati the goddess of knowledge and wisdom, this part also shows the formidable black-faced Kali the goddess of death and doomsday.  Please keep on an eye out for the diversified ways the goddesses are depicted on the artists and their style.  Even the goddess can be expressed as adorable or bewitching.

The second part of the exhibition “Celestial Ladies” exhibits women figures depicted as an idol with goddess-like beauty.  At the beginning of the twenty century in China, Yuefenpai commercial calendar posters, which were distributed by companies to their customers for the New Year gained great popularity among the masses.  The common subject of the posters was the modern girl, dressing in the latest fashion and surrounded by imported goods.  By contrast, the film actresses in the late 1960s in Pakistan, at the height of the film industry are divinely depicted in film posters, as the title of the film A Face as Beautiful as the Moon.  At that time, more than 130 films were produced in the ancient city of Lahore. Thus the film industry and film culture centered in the city were referred as “Lollywood,” similar to Hollywood in the United Sates.

The final part of the exhibition features “Gaia, the Guardian Deities of Mother Earth,” with artworks, such as Orkhon from Mongolia, portraying the figure of a deva in a waterfall in lofty solemnly and Weeping Goddess, which laments over the death of traditions and culture peculiar to Indonesia.

We hope this exhibition will give you a chance to listen to the whisper of these real goddesses, divine women, and guardian deities of mother earth.