Humanities Arts
News
20 Nov 2023
Created by western India’s nomadic Vaghri community, mata ni pachedi is a tradition of cloth painting dating back 300 years. Originally meant as canopies for shrines and as objects of ritual worship, these textiles depict a pantheon of local goddesses surrounded by regional motifs. Read on to understand how printing, painting and cloth come together in religious consumerism.
06 Nov 2023
Since the 3rd century CE, master puppeteers of southern India have brought the epics of the subcontinent to life through Tholu Bommalata, a form of shadow puppetry performed with elaborate, life-sized leather puppets. Come discover this intricate musical theatre tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation and continues to thrive to this day.
20 Oct 2023
The Cholamandal Artists' Village was established in 1966 to encourage self-sufficiency, community living and the creation of a South Indian visual identity. Since then, it has undergone a transformative journey. Discover its history and achievements.
09 Oct 2023
Between the seventh and ninth centuries, south peninsular India experienced a cultural renaissance, resulting from the extensive patronage of a powerful dynasty, the Pallavas. Discover their unique contributions to the arts and literature of the time, which led to the creation of a new, Dravidian idiom of temple architecture in South Asia.
24 Sep 2023
Amidst the political tumult of nineteenth-century colonial India, Abanindranath Tagore — an artist from Bengal — set out to invent a new ‘Indian’ visual language, rejecting European artistic ideals. He pioneered a style that combined themes from mythology, history, and rural life, with elements from India’s miniature painting traditions. This would evolve into the Bengal School — a movement that reimagined a distinctly Indian approach to art. Tagore influenced an entire generation of artists and left a lasting impact on the quest for Indian identity during the struggle for Independence.
11 Sep 2023
In the mid-sixteenth century, Mughal emperor Humayun brought two Persian master painters to India, who not only established an imperial atelier but also began a major tradition of miniature painting in South Asia — Mughal manuscript paintings. This painting tradition flourished for centuries, enjoying royal patronage and resulted in the illustration of significant literary texts, scriptures, biographies, dynastic histories and scientific literature. Known for their naturalism and intricacy, Mughal paintings also combined a range of influences — Persian, Indian and European — and were often made collaboratively by artists and other specialists in the imperial ateliers, known as kitabkhanas. Discover the legacy and lasting influence of this painting tradition and its eventual decline in the late eighteenth century.
28 Aug 2023
Traditionally woven in Gujarat, India, mashru — meaning ‘lawful’ or ‘permitted’ in Arabic — was invented to allow Muslims to wear silk garments despite injunctions against it in the Hadith, an important Islamic religious text offering teachings and moral guidance. The fabric’s innovative weaving technique, where each silk warp crosses six cotton wefts, keeps silk from touching the body when worn. Whilst the earliest visual references to mashru date back to the seventeenth-century in the Deccan region of southern India, the fabric has lived many lives, gaining popularity amongst Islamic populations in India, West Asia and Africa as it was traded along Indian Ocean maritime routes.
14 Aug 2023
In the early seventeenth century, a new painting tradition — characterised by its use of bold colours, gilding and gem-setting — emerged in the Thanjavur region of southern India. While Thanjavur paintings originally featured gods and saints, the tradition grew to incorporate secular subjects owing to a range of influences over the next several centuries, including Mughal, Maratha, and European art. Thanjavur paintings continue to be popular as memorabilia and worship objects, and are one the most recognisable South Indian painting styles today.
19 Jun 2023
Elaborately carved with female figures and floral motifs, ringstones dating to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC are amongst the most enigmatic artefacts of Mauryan and Shunga art. Scholars continue to speculate about their use, and believe that they may have been used as amulets and ritualistic objects or designators. Discover more about these ancient artefacts through this article.
04 Jun 2023
Beginning in the fifteenth century, until the nineteenth century, artists turned to classical music for inspiration, combining painting, allegory and music to create a genre known as Ragamala painting. Ragas — melodic frameworks central to Indian classical music — date back to nearly the fifth century, and each major raga is meant to evoke a particular mood or atmosphere, a season and a time of day. Ragamala paintings are distinctive for their nuanced depiction of emotions through environmental metaphors and imagery that often includes a hero or a heroine or both.
26 May 2023
Osaka Metropolitan University scientists found that Japanese and Chinese, who are considered to have high-context cultures with a high degree of reliance on information shared by the speaker and listener, are code-switching from high-context cultures to low-context cultures when communicating with people from each other’s country. Furthermore, the scientists found that the Japanese do not engage in much code-switching with Chinese students in Japan.
23 Apr 2023
Born out of the changing society of nineteenth-century Calcutta, Kalighat painting was a popular medium among the patuas (painters) who worked in the vicinity of the Kalighat temple. Though these paintings were originally intended to be souvenirs for devotees visiting the temple and featured primarily Hindu imagery, they expanded over time to include other religious traditions as well as socio-political commentary.
26 Feb 2023
Ajanta Murals represent some of India's earliest and most significant examples of cave painting. Spanning from the second and first centuries BCE to the late fifth CE, they narrate stories of the Buddha through his life as various bodhisattvas. Read on to discover the iconography, style and history of Ajanta Murals.
13 Feb 2023
Theyyam is a ritualistic performance in the Kolathunadu district of Kerala, India. It is believed to be a physical manifestation of the presence of deities either connected to the Hindu pantheon or derived from folk tales and stories of people who were later deified. Read on to know more about the history and development of Theyyam performances.
15 Jan 2023
Believed to have been built in 250 BCE to commemorate the occasion of the Buddha's first sermon in Sarnath, the lion capital is the most elaborately carved surviving capital made under the patronage of the Mauryan king Ashoka.
19 Dec 2022
Often used by devotees as a meditation tool, Mandalas are symmetrical circular forms that typically comprise a central deity surrounded by motifs and symbols.
20 Nov 2022
Practised in only three countries in the world, the process of making double Ikat is intricate and demands a degree of mathematical precision while weaving the textile on the loom.
09 Oct 2022
Batik is a technique of creating patterns on cloth through wax-resist printing and dyeing and has historically been practised in several parts of the world, including India, China, Southeast Asia and Africa.
08 Sep 2022
Thangka is a devotional scroll-painting tradition, emerging from seventh-century Nepal, in which images of Buddhist deities are painted on scrolls to gain divine merit and to serve as visual aids for teaching and meditating.
28 Aug 2022
Commissioned between 1815-1820, the Fraser Album is considered a defining work of the Company School of painting depicting the people of India.
14 Aug 2022
A genre of sculpture developed in the northwest region of the ancient Indian subcontinent in the form of reliefs and freestanding work as expressions of the Buddhist faith.
31 Jul 2022
The history of extracting chay root dye — a natural red colourant — from the chay plant (Oldenlandia umbellata) dates back to at least the seventeenth century. Read on to know more about the relevance of the dye in the textile dyeing practices of southern India.
06 Jul 2022
The Hong Kong Baptist University Symphony Orchestra (HKBU Symphony Orchestra) will present an innovative performance showcasing human creativity alongside artificial intelligence at its Annual Gala Concert, to be held on14 July (Thursday) at 8:00pm in the Hong Kong City Hall.
11 Jan 2021
Lingnan University in Hong Kong (LU) has won three awards in The 22nd Qi Yue Recitation Arts Festival and National College Students Recitation Conference. LU is the only winning team from Hong Kong this year, and also the first local university to have received awards in this competition. Lee Wenxin, a second-year undergraduate student of the LEO Dr David P. Chan Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Data Science Programme of the Faculty of Business, won the “Young Talent Special Award” with her work “Jia Wen”; Dr Zhou Bo, Senior Lecturer of the Chinese Language Education and Assessment Centre (CLEAC) received the “Teaching Excellence Award”. LU also won the “Outstanding Organisation Award”.
13 Nov 2020
Organised by the Academy of Film (AF) at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), the Global University Film Awards (GUFA) 2020 concluded tonight (6 November) with the award presentation ceremony. The Gold Award went to the entry from the Korea National University of Arts in South Korea, while the Best Documentary prize went to the film entry from INSAS in Belgium.
03 Nov 2020
South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has unveiled the second residency project, dedicated to blending art and science, has been conducted at the Science Cabin 215 of UNIST.
03 Nov 2020
South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has unveiled the first residency project, dedicated to blending art and science, has been conducted at the Science Cabin 215 of UNIST.
27 Aug 2019
The School of Design and Human Engineering at South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has been selected to lead the exterior styling of Hyundai Motor’s autonomous vehicles.
27 Aug 2019
A design team, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has come up with a brilliant child-friendly design idea to help children have fun during their hospital stays.

10 Jul 2019
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) held its dynamic MA Graduation Fashion Show “CHAOS” yesterday. Over 400 guests, including representatives from the fashion industry, family, friends, and supporters were in the audience.
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