1944.9.46

Collection type

Object

Description

Carved ivory female and male figure set in a landscape of rocks, trees, waves.

Geographical reference

China

Asia > Eastern Asia > China

Person

Field collector Duncan MacPherson

PRM source Mary Louisa Sturrock

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1841

Date collected

circa 1841

Acquisition information

Donated: 1944

Materials and processes

Material Elephant Tooth Ivory Animal, Process Carved

Dimensions

Height: max 95 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1944.9.46

Research and responses

Mrs W.D. Sturrock undoubtedly refers to Mary Macpherson, wife of William Duncan Sturrock (1880 - 1942) See biographies database for further details [L.Ph 26/3/2004]

This object was examined in September 2019 by Catherine de Guise, Beyond the Binary community curator, as part of the Beyond the Binary project which ran from 2018 to 2020. The following response was recorded: “The bodhisattva that originated in India around the eleventh century, as Avalokitesvara, came to be reinterpreted in China and Japan from the twelfth century. Avalokitesvara was originally depicted as a man, so is often seen wearing chest-revealing clothes and possibly even a moustache. In China, Guanyin is usually perceived as a woman, though there are many signs of masculinity and some people have seen her as a genderless being. In more modern times she has increasingly been represented as a woman, possibly due to more interaction with ‘Western’ ideas of gender and ‘Marian influences’ from Christian iconography. Western observers found it difficult to understand the ambiguity in her gender presentation, as seen in the museum’s original nineteenth century captions. The bodhisattva shows how different cultures could interpret a figure; the possibilities of representation outside of the binary; and the way in which a European interpretation appropriated and forced Guanyin within a ‘Western’ binary” [OS 17/02/2020]

Search terms: Figure, Religion, Fish Figure