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Singapore exhibition celebrates beauty

Published: Saturday, May 19, 2007

Are you beautiful? Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum aims to define the elusive concept in a new exhibition that provides eye candy as well as thought-provoking displays ranging from Barbie dolls to ancient artifacts dating back 2,200 years ago.

"Beauty is a very universal topic, yet it is very subjective," said Gauri Parimoo Krishnan, curator of "Beauty in Asia - 200 BCE to Today."

"The quest to beautify has existed in the human psyche from the beginning of time and every culture and time had its own standards for beauty. This is as much of an issue today as it was centuries ago," she told Reuters.

The exhibition took two years to put together and includes some 300 pieces, most of them from the museum's vaults which are being seen by the public for the first time.

Verses from Hindi love poet Bihari of the "Satasai" (Seven Hundred Verses) fame, set the tone: "Nothing is beautiful or ugly in itself; beauty lies in the beholder's eye. The more a thing attracts, the lovelier it seems." In ancient cultures, beauty was linked to fertility and pregnant women with their rotund bellies and ample curves were considered the epitome of gorgeous.

As societies became more sophisticated, the notions of beauty changed. The oldest piece on display is an Indian "Mother Goddess" terracotta figurine dating back to between 100 and 200 B.C., with round, full breasts and lush, large hips, hardly attributes that would be glorified in today's "size zero" world.

The ideal that generous curves are beautiful lingers for several centuries in Asia, where it was celebrated in statues such as "Fat Lady" of China's 9th century Tang dynasty and an 11th century bronze of Uma Parameshvari, a Hindu mother goddess, which is the exhibition's star display. But then fat no longer became fashionable and willowy women became the standards for beauty, not unlike today.

The museum offers several interactive displays, including a touch screen that allows you to customise a face into your own ideal for beauty and a documentary which looks at tattooing as it is viewed by artists and the customers.

Some of the most popular displays are found in the "Quest for Beauty" section, with its glittering Indian jewellery, delicate Peranakan powder boxes and everyday grooming utensils like ancient body scrubbers and filigreed rosewater sprinklers.

But the exhibit also focuses on the dark side of this search, displaying the metal rings worn by some Asian tribes to elongate their necks and the tiny shoes and mutilated extremities of Chinese women who bound their feet to keep them "dainty."

"Beauty in Asia: 200 BCE to Today," Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place, Singapore 179555.

www.acm.org.sg.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007

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