Reflections on art, memory, and cultural encounters across places
Where the Sun Rises: A Wander Through the Okayama Orient Museum
More than 8,000 kilometres from Mesopotamia, in a city famous for its peaches, stands a fortress-like museum housing one of Japan’s most remarkable collections of ancient Oriental artefacts.
Wander in Nara: Making My Own Calligraphy Brush
I came to Nara to buy calligraphy brushes but ended up learning to make one, and discovered that Japan’s brush-making craft is said to have begun here, with a monk and a tuft of hair.
Guang Xing Paper Mill: Where Paper Is Still Made by Hand
In Puli, a town ringed by forests and mountain peaks, a workshop still makes paper the slow way: one sheet at a time.
Gripped by Ink: Kneading My Way Into Nara Sumi
Setting foot in the 150-year-old ink shop in Nara, I expected to get my hands dirty. Instead, I learned that my ink stick could outlive me by more than a thousand years.
Wandering Into Kyosai’s World: Master Painter, Satirist and Jester
Frogs playing the shamisen, skeletons in top hats, and a painter jailed for his jokes. Meet Kawanabe Kyosai, the eccentric 19th-century master whose humour still makes us laugh.
Finding Siddham: An Ancient Script Hidden in Japan’s Buddhist Temples
Born in India and travelled eastward with Buddhism, Siddham found an unexpected home in the temples of Japan, where this distinctive script has survived and continues to be practiced today.
When Artists Turned to Calligraphy: Kahitsukan’s “Calligraphy by Modern Artists”
Tucked away in Gion is Kahitsukan, a museum currently exhibiting works by 20th-century artists, none of them trained calligraphers, who brought their own sensibilities to the art of ink and brush.
Inside Mainichi Shodo: Japan’s Destination for Contemporary Calligraphy
Somewhere between 25,000 pieces of calligraphy, I find myself hit by an epiphany that calligraphy is nothing but the traces of the soul. A calligrapher explains why.
Wander in Riyadh: National Museum of Saudi Arabia
Next to a former royal palace in Riyadh sits a museum holding 7,000 years of history: a meteorite older than memory, lost gold cities, and the birth of a kingdom.
Wander in Riyadh: Arts & Culture Guide
From a mudbrick citadel that gave birth to a kingdom to a forgotten 1980s mall reborn as a hub for contemporary art, Riyadh hides some of its best stories in plain sight. Here is where to find them.