Elaborated embroidery designs are woven onto precious silk fabrics, in a riot of colours, fringes, pleats and silver ornaments. They are butterflies, considered the mothers of their ancestors, but also benevolent dragons, who protect silkworm farms and ensure rainfall and harvests. On the occasion of the celebrations of the 700 years since the death of Marco Polo, at the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice, the textile and ornamental culture of the Far East is shown in all its complexity and refinement with the exhibition "Miao: Costumes and jewels from Southern China”, scheduled until 28 April 2024.
Starting from the eastern valleys, a place of trade and river routes, you are guided, one habit after another, up to the most mountainous areas inhabited by the Miao population, in Southern China. A region that only in the 18th century
definitively became a part of the Chinese empire, and which Marco Polo, during his 17 years of stay at the court of Kublai Khan, probably never visited firsthand, but did nevertheless report on it inside the Milione, quoting other written sources.
With a population of around 9.6 million, residing mainly in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi and Hubei, the Miao are the fifth in demographic order among the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups from the People's Republic of China.
Custodians of centuries-old traditions, they best express their artisan skills in the creation of fabrics and embroidery designs, where they apply ancient techniques. Each village, each clan and each family is distinguished by colours, style, techniques and decorative motifs: for this reason, in the past Chinese sources divided the Miao subgroups according to the colour of their clothes, the length of their skirts or their hairstyles. For example, eastern Guizhou is renowned for "hundred-fold" skirts and jackets open at the front, often calendered, with coloured embroidery or borders for large parties, over which eye-catching silver is worn. In the mountainous areas of western Guizhou, however, wool and linen or hemp capes are widely used, sewn onto the shoulders and sleeves of clothes, while in central-southern Guizhou, abstract decorative motifs are favoured and the style is sober and elegant.
It is through these decorative motifs, but also the long work of collecting and cultivating the necessary raw materials, and the laborious processes of making the garments that an alternative life system is revealed, linked to animistic beliefs and which has survived over time in a fragile balance, today constantly threatened by the expansion of tourism.
Thanks to the generous loan of Franco Passarello, tireless collector of clothes from all over the world, and the Italian Geographical Society, which sent some very precious illustrated albums that the emperors of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) had commissioned to get to know the populations of the territories further away from the empire, at the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice the salient features of a complex and multifaceted culture are displayed to the public, which over the centuries has been able to proudly maintain its own identity.
