Abstract
Fostering Communal Identities: Communitarian Artistic Projects in Local Communities of Premodern China
Highlights
Communitarian projects around the globe often comprise a large scale of artistic practices, since artworks serve as powerful tool for symbolizing and demarcating territory and identity, together they form the foundation of the culture of a particular region
This paper tends to bring in an example of the premodern period to enrich the discussion by proving that communitarian artistic projects flourish in the past
During the late fifth and sixth centuries, lay members of local communities devoted themselves to communal artistic projects of establishing stone stelae to embody their religious concerns
Summary
Communitarian projects around the globe often comprise a large scale of artistic practices, since artworks serve as powerful tool for symbolizing and demarcating territory and identity, together they form the foundation of the culture of a particular region. 5 Perhaps it is partly because of political regulations carried out during the late fifth century that laid the foundation of these communities.[6] Building upon these former discussions, this paper aspires to add an artistic dimension into the discussion by contending that it was the activity of art that formed a public sphere allowing them to collaborate and congregate as organized communities During this period, lay patrons in these communities were bonded to the greater collectives by participating in communal artistic projects of establishing stone stelae for religious purposes.[7] Erected in the middle of major crossroads, these stone stelae served as the center of the communities, projecting a sense of identity and territory of the adherent patrons. Such an artistic enquiry into the stele projects should reveal both the artistic concerns and practices of the lay patrons in the late fifth and sixth centuries It shows that art as a powerful device to generate identity bears a protracted function of unifying communities, evoking a sense of collectivity, reconciliating ethnic conflicts caused by cultural differences. By embodying all these artistic symbols, the stelae became a symbolic platform that accommodated all diversified ethnic cultures in the communities, through which to figuratively unify all ethnic groups into one consolidated transethnic collective, despite their diversity in terms of cultural or societal background
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