A journey through the fakes of the cultures of the world at the Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography in Parma. From March 9th to June 30th 2024
The Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography of Parma is planning a new exhibition entitled "Fake, deceived and deceivers" from March 9th to June 30th 2024. The temporary exhibition offers a journey into the fake among the cultures of the world. A perhaps unusual path for an ethnographic museum to focus on the theme of fakes.
The theme of art forgery, as well as historical forgery, worries critics and art scholars since the paternity or maternity of a work determines its ultimate value, and because the discovery of the deception, and the consequent hunt for deceiver, makes artistic evaluation a process almost as intriguing as a detective story..
Even in ethnography and Asian arts the cards can be mixed up, the styles confused and one can easily go back in time using styles and techniques of the past with contemporary manual skills and sensitivity.
All 23 works exhibited in this exhibition were the subject of great debate among scholars in the twentieth century, some based on their originality, others on their evident falsity. With this uncertainty, but with a greater orientation towards non-original production, the Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography exhibits artefacts normally deposited in the vault-archives and therefore unknown to the public..
Vases and statues in terracotta and porcelain, cups, flasks, paintings in watercolor or tempera or ink on paper, silk or canvas in which the styles of the Chinese Tang or Song dynasties, as well as reproductions of ancient bronze or wooden statues, or even Amazonian rituals tiaras in vegetable fibre, jars, masks and fetishes from Benin, Congo and Cameroon... become the starting point for flashbacks that bring ancient native rites or traditions back to life.
Style, era and author are the three great paradigms that can decree the falsity of a work. The reflection is therefore focused on beauty, a non-scientific factor, but one of human universality. The production of the fake, which presupposes great knowledge and sensitivity towards the pure and original artistic source, arises from an original beauty and is transmitted in the so-called fake. Is it therefore about equal beauty? Evaluations and reflections are left to visitors.
The director of the Museum Chiara Allegri states: “This exhibition, in addition to revealing part of our heritage not normally exhibited, wants to make us reflect on the concept of fake in art as in life. What do we consider false? What leads us to believe a work is false? In a historical moment that sees the entry of new processes and tools linked to artificial intelligence, it is more necessary than ever to clarify what our society deems false. In the case of art and ethnography, falsehood is inherent in the process of creation that takes an artistic style they created from the ancestors and, handling it perfectly, makes it its own."
And she continues: “Is it bad faith, driven by business and greed, the motivation to make an object fake? Or is it rather the emulation of artistic models considered sources of perfection? It is our intent to reveal that even behind imitative artistic paths, stylistically or conceptually, ferments of rare beauty can be hidden regardless of the path of origin and production. Once again this path of exposure and experience is permitted to us thanks to the large ethnographic collections started in 1901 by San Guido Maria Conforti, founder of the congregation of the Xaverian Missionaries and of the Chinese Museum."
The visit to the exhibition is included in the entrance ticket to the Museum: €5 standard - €2 under-18.
Free: disabled people, journalists with card, teachers accompanying school groups..
Exhibit curated by: Chiara Allegri, Maurizio Salvarani and Laura Ferrari.
Info: Museo d’Arte Cinese ed Etnografico, viale San Martino, 8 – 43123 Parma
Tel: 0521-257337 - web: www.museocineseparma.org - mail:
