National treasures returned: Kizil Grotto murals

CGTN By Xu Tingting and Zhang Wanbao   2018-07-20

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From July 14 to September 2 two exhibitions revolving around a singular theme, the Buddhist grottoes of Kizil, Xinjiang are presented at M WOODS in Beijing. 

A program supported by the China National Arts Fund, Collected Reproductions of the Kizil Grottoes and Overseas Murals represents a culmination of twenty years of research led by Kucha Research Institute of Xinjiang. 

The other exhibition shares three murals originating from the sacred caves of Kizil. The two exhibitions explore the beauty and originality of Kizil Grottoes that located at the ancient Silk Road. 

The Kizil Grottoes

The Kizil Grottoes are located on the northern bank of the Muzal river, in Baicheng County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. 

Known in China as one of the "Four Great Grottes" - a list including the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, the Yungang Grottoes, and the Longmen Grottoes, the Kizil Grottoes were registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014. 

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, archaeological expeditions to the historical Western Regions of China attracted many foreign explorers. These expeditions removed the different number of murals and painted status from Kizil Grottoes. 

Currently, the majority of the overseas Kizil murals are in Germany, while the rest are scattered across institutions in Russia, France, Hungary, the United States, Japan and South Korea. Others belong to undocumented private collections or may be lost entirely. 

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Replicas of the Kizil Grottoes and Overseas Murals 

By collaborating with other international institutions in possession of murals from the Kizil Grottoes, the Kucha Research Institute has led an initiative to digitize every piece and bring these into a central collection in Xinjiang.

The Kucha Research Institute of Xinjiang started research on the overseas collection of Kizil Grotto Murals in 1998. 

After twenty years of efforts, the Institute has documented 465 pieces from different museums in the world. Parts of these digital images are showing at M WOODS this summer. 

With the help of 3D digital scanning, researchers at the Institute have measured the murals and compared them with the pieces left in the original grottoes. Now many of their original locations have been identified. 

The exhibition not only presents images of the overseas murals but also replicas of two caves belonging to the Kizil Grottoes. 

The Return of National Treasures 

As the only public institution in the Chinese mainland to own original fragments from Kizil Grottoes, M WOODS presents these three masterpieces in this exhibition. 

One of the three masterpieces: Mystery Figure with Five Hair Knots. /CGTN Photo

The returned three masterpieces are Head of a Deity, Mystery Figure with Five Hair Knots and also Millennium Smile, which has significant meaning in Kizil Grotto research and cultural transmission. 

One of the extraordinary pieces is Millennium Smile that depicts a royal family member from Ancient Kucha. Like Mona Lisa, a coy smile brightens her face, an enigmatic glance that has captivated viewers for over a millennium. 

Details are shown on the mural point to a talented painter with ample knowledge of Buddhism. This marvelous piece still has the power to move people's hearts. 

The original grottoes were sites for self-cultivation for monks. 

"The creation and collection of art is yet another self-cultivation, and art is timeless. Collecting fragments from the Kizil Grottoes is also a kind of self-cultivation." Founder of M WOODS Lei Wanwan said. 

(Video Credit: Zhang Wanbao; Music Credit: Sun Dawei)

The Politics of Reconstructing Ancient Grotto Murals from Xinjiang in China Today

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BY COLIN SIYUAN CHINNERY

17 SEP 2018

Why did Beijing’s M WOODS museum recently mount two simultaneous exhibitions focusing on the ancient Buddhist site of Kizil, Xinjiang Province?

M WOODS, a private contemporary art museum based in Beijing’s 798 Art Zone, recently mounted two simultaneous exhibitions focusing on the ancient Buddhist site of Kizil, Xinjiang Province. Carved from the Baicheng County hillside between the 3rd and 8th centuries, the Kizil Buddhist grottoes are China’s earliest, large-scale Buddhist cave complex, and are regularly listed as one of China’s four most significant Buddhist art sites.

‘Collected Reproductions of the Kizil Grottoes and Overseas Murals’ was produced with the Kucha Research Institute of Xinjiang, who worked for 20 years tracing the whereabouts of countless mural fragments removed by foreign archaeologists a century ago and subsequently dispersed to public and private collections around the world. The institute obtained high-quality photographs of the mural fragments and found their original placement in the Buddhist grottoes. A selection of these were then mapped onto the walls of the ground floor exhibition hall at M WOODS, recreating the murals to scale, and a 1:1 replica of grotto no. 38 was constructed within this volume, giving audiences an approximate experience of what the Buddhist caves were like in situ.

On the first floor was its companion show ‘Monks and Artists’, consisting of three original mural fragments from the Kizil grottoes, acquired by M WOODS founders Lin Han and Wanwan Lei, and repatriated to China. Accompanying these original fragments are stone carvings from other civilizations along the Silk Road, and Kader Attia’s Open Your Eyes, part of his project shown originally at dOCUMENTA (13). However, M WOODS is the first and only institution in China to own original fragments from the caves. This begs the question: why did a contemporary art institution decide to devote its energies to a show of ancient religious art?

M WOODS founder Lin Han has repeatedly claimed that the Kizil exhibition is as contemporary as the museum’s show of Paul McCarthy videos, mounted this past spring. Contemporary, in this context, is synonymous with ‘relevant’ – and the Kizil murals reveal much about modern China. Although Kizil is well within China’s current borders, most of its murals show scarcely any Chinese influence at all, but rather Gandharan, Indian and Persian characteristics, demonstrating the incredible cultural fluidity of the Silk Road. Today, the Silk Road is being used as a blueprint for China’s massive international trade scheme, the Belt and Road Initiative, while Xinjiang, home to Kizil and much of the Silk Road, is undergoing a period of extreme religious and political tension, as the Chinese government has exerted tight control over the Uyghurs, the Muslim minority population there.

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Ever since the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), China has attached enormous strategic importance to its Western Regions, consisting of the Hexi Corridor in Gansu Province and Xinjiang, as a vital trade lifeline. Whether the area now called Xinjiang was part of the Chinese empire has always been a barometer of China’s political fortunes. The Kizil murals were painted during a Chinese power vacuum, after the collapse of the Han Dynasty and before the Tang Dynasty reasserted its influence in the region. It is precisely this lack of Chinese cultural influence that makes them so unique. Their stunning colours derive from minerals such as lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and their inventive compositions are untethered from strict Buddhist conventions, revealing a wide range of Asian sources. The artists who created the murals were far away from their own territories, and were able to take inspiration from each other.

Equally important, however, is seeing the negative historical and cultural space of this exhibition. In 1906, many of them were cut from cave walls by Albert von Le Coq, a German archaeologist, and brought to the Museum for Asian Art in Berlin; other explorers followed, and murals appeared in Russia, Japan and the US. The removal and dispersal of the murals runs reverse to the globalization that once brought wealth to Xinjiang. Foreign powers found little resistance when they plundered Chinese cultural heritage during the turbulent years of the early 20th century. The feeling of loss this history brings is compounded by the reconstructed grotto at M WOODS, marked by the scars of excavation. The sculpture of a Buddha figure is missing from its niche, leaving behind a white shadow.

The contradictions of the Kizil murals makes their exhibition at M WOODS and the 20 years of study conducted by the Kucha Research Institute of Xinjiang all the more essential. Xinjiang itself is a place of contradiction and conflict, and understanding its present requires a deeper knowledge of its past.

‘Monks and Artists’ and ‘Collected Reproductions of the Kizil Grottoes and Overseas Murals’ ran at M WOODS, Beijing, from 14 July – 2 September 2, 2018.

COLIN SIYUAN CHINNERY

Colin Siyuan Chinnery is an artist and curator based in Beijing, China. He is a contributing editor of frieze.