Oct.2024 22
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Hmong Embroiderers with Myth-Based Imagination

Introduction
Split-thread stitching in the Qingshui River area of Shidong, Taijiang County, Guizhou Province, is a national intangible cultural heritage. Through artistic imagination and mythological thinking, Hmong women artists create exaggerated and formalized patterns, presenting a harmonious coexistence of human and all living creatures in nature, providing a unique aesthetic experience for the viewers.
Details
Hmong Embroiderers with Myth-Based Imagination
Peide Yang

Split-thread stitching in Shidong, on the banks of the Qingshui River in Taijiang County, Guizhou Province, is a national intangible cultural heritage. Through artistic imagination and inspiration from mythology, Hmong women artists create exaggerated and formalized patterns. They then divide colorful threads into eight to sixteen sections, which they then embroider onto a piece of fabric, creating a work of art that stands alone in the end.


Embroidery in Shidong became known by professional artists and art collectors in the 1950s, and thereafter was placed into the collections of the Central Academy of Arts and Design (now the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University), the Guizhou Arts Society, and the Guizhou Culture Center. In the 1980s, art museums in Japan, the US, and France also began to collect Hmong embroidery.

The style of embroidery in Shidong is wildly imaginative. Humans are integrated with all other living creates of nature. One contains the other, and the other contains the one. The resulting picture is a magical world presenting a unique aesthetic experience for the viewer.