The Society is proud of its four decades of accomplishment. Since its establishment, the Society has created over 500 quality programs and events that included exhibitions, art shows, performing arts events, lectures, slide shows, discussion panels and demonstrations, excursions and special tours.
2001-2008
2007-2008 Rice is Life -
"Canada's First Exhibit Dedicated to Rice"
Developed by the Vancouver Museum in partnership with the Canadian Society for Asian Arts.
May 4, 2007 to January 1, 2008, Vancouver Museum
September 19 - November 23, 2008, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Funded by:
The Department of Canadian Heritage
Canadian International Development Agency
Canadian Society for Asian Arts
The exhibition Rice is Life draws upon a rich variety of material culture and images, to explore rice’s significance in societies from all over the globe. The exhibit highlights the cultural foundation of the world’s most important food crop—the staple that sustains nearly one-half of all humankind. Objects range from ancient ceramics, rare woodcarvings and textiles, to contemporary batik paintings and religious posters. Rice is Life also explores issues related to the future of rice, such as water and land management, the use of science to foster sustainable rice development, development issues as well as environmental protection.
Why Rice matters
Rice is deeply embedded in the culture and heritage of societies from Asia to Australia, from the Americas to Africa. In much of Asia, rice, ritual, and religion are inseparable due to the widespread belief that the rice plant was divinely given to humans, often by a goddess or “rice mother.”
Rice is eaten for good luck at the Lunar New Year, offered to ancestors and deities, made into spectacular displays for festivals and tossed over newly wedded couples. In the form of rice wine, it is served to guests and poured as a libation to mark sacred rituals.
Rice is the staple food of over half of the world's population. In Asia alone, more than 2 billion people obtain most of their energy intake from rice-based foods. The UN reports that rice makes up 20% of the world's dietary supply and over 1 billion households worldwide depend on rice production as a source of income.
A major scientific breakthrough was reported in 2001, when the rice genome became the first food crop to be successfully decoded. Knowledge of the genome is expected to provide the basic information required to engineer new types of rice. Yet the situation for many of the world’s rice producers is grim. The spectre of increased hunger, malnutrition, poverty and conflict in the coming decades resulted in the declaration by the United Nations General Assembly of the year 2004 as the International Year of Rice (IYR). Devoting a year to a staple food was an unprecedented step in the history of the United Nations.
The growing and eating of rice are so fundamental to daily life in many cultures that rice has become intimately entwined with individual identity, social organization, and artistic expression. For many, rice is not merely a commodity. Rice is Life.
Click here to download the official press release.
The brocure of this exhibition is available at CSAA's office.
2008 Return to the Forgotten Kingdom - Photographs of Lijiang, Yunnan, China by Ulli Steltzer
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, 578 Carrall St., Vancouver
October 4 to 30, 2008, Reception: October 4, 2-4pm
In 1997, internationally acclaimed photographer Ulli Steltzer traveled to Lijiang, China, to document the minority people and landscapes now designated a United Nations World Heritage Site. Her compelling black-and-white photographs visually preserve the arts and lifestyles of the distinct and fragile culture of this area, which has since become a major tourist attraction. The Canadian Society for Asian Arts presents a selection of these insightful photographs through the month of October.
Catalogue "Sight and Insight - Life in Lijiang, Baidi, and Yongning by Ulli Steltzer" (我眼中和心中的形象--生活在丽江.白地.永宁的人们) in English and Chinese: CAD$35 available for purchase.
ISBN 7805868484
2008 “Enchantment of Genji: Music Inspired by Poems from The Tale of Genji”
http://www.canadiansocietyforasianarts.org/pages/genji.htm
Featuring Alcvin Takegawa Ramos on biwa and shakuhachi and Satomi Saeki on koto With commentary by Dr. Jan Walls, Professor Emeritus, SFU
October 25, 2008 at 2:00 pm
National Nikkei Heritage Centre, Ellipse Lobby, 6688 Southoaks Crescent, Burnaby
Masters of traditional Japanese music, Alcvin Takegawa Ramos and Satomi Saeki offer moving new musical interpretations of the classic poetry of The Tale of Genji. Recitations of selected poems from the tale in both English and the original Japanese will provide inspirational links between their renderings of the themes of love, the seasons, solitude, and impermanence perfectly suited to the haunting sounds of shakuhachi, biwa, and koto.
2008 A Talk and Informal Discussion ""Paper-cuts: art made of the most modest of materials, and with modest goals"
by Dr. Roberta Kremer
Thursday, September 11, 2008 7:30 pm
Hosted by: Mr. and Mrs. Willem Stronck, Directors, CSAA
Dr. Roberta S. Kremer served as the Acting Curator of Education and Public Programs at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in 2007-2008. She regularly teaches Museum Studies within the Anthropology Department of the University of British Columbia and Holocaust Literature in the UBC Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies.
2007 At the Centre of the Shogun’s Realm: The ‘Bridge of Japan’ and its Symbolic Meaning - Dr. Timon Screech
2007 Museum of Anthropology, U.B.C.
2007 Patterns Cut in Stone: Kings and the Agency of Calligraphy in Ming China - Dr. Craig Clunas
2007, Museum of Anthropology, U.B.C.
2003 Traditoinal Crafts of Korea
Korean Cultural Properties Exhibition - Celebrating 40 years of diplomatic relations between Korea and Canada
June 16-27, 2003, The Pendelum Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
Please visit this link to go to the exhibition's website.
Brochures of this exhibition are available at CSAA's office.
Hosts:
- Korean Foundation for Preservation of Cultural Properties
- Canadian Society for Asian Arts
Sponsors:
- Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Republic of Korea
- The Korean Culture & Arts Foundation
Curators:
- FPCP: Shin, Jin La
- HSS: Park, Dae Woon (Daniel)
- CSAA: Sam Carter, Margo Palmer, Anne Marie Dekker
- Exhibition Committee: CSAA
- Exhibition Committee: FPCP