L I L Y A

Project on the Silk Road

Prior to the opening of the Venice Biennale 2017,

Was inaugurated the exhibition:

MARCO POLO ON THE SILK ROAD

LILYA

Pavlovic-Dear

Monday May 8th, from 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Unesco in Venice - Palazzo Zorzi

Salizada Zorzi 4930, Castello, 30122 Venezia, Italy

The same event will be presented as well in the:

Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

 on September 28th 2017

Paris based artist, Lilya Pavlovic Dear, examines the past and connects it to the present globalization, as well as the process of multiple influences between east and west. The video of 15min, created in 2021, is built as a collage of actual landscapes through which the Silk Road is passing and paintings and photographs and historical documents are overlapping those landscapes. The video is accompanied by music of various countries.

 “In 1992, when it was celebrated 600 years of Columbus’s discovery of America, I searched for a manuscript which inspired him to find a faster sea route to the East. I came upon the 13th century manuscript, “The Book of Wonders” or “Le Livres des Merveilles” (original title). I have always admired Persian miniatures, Buddha sculptures, delicate Chinese ink drawings, and Celadon porcelain. All those elements like pieces of a puzzle fell into place and made a base for the inspiration to create 50 of my art works, which trace chronologically through paintings, drawings and prints the Voyage of Marco Polo on the Silk Road.”

 Lilya Pavlovic Dear, artist

“Nothing is more moving then to recognize the components of the identity of this artist thought the conquest of a painting where figuration, narration and organic forms co-exist in a very personal image, sumptuous, quite Oriental and modern. Marco Polo is she herself, the artist in person, today’s explorer who after pilgrimages to the land of dreams, comes back to become the symbol of the meeting of two worlds, very different, but reconciled thanks to the magic of art.”

Eurydice Trichon-Milsani, art-critic affiliated to MNAM of the Georges Pompidou Center, Paris

About the artist

 Lilya is an internationally recognized artist who has worked on this theme since 1994. She has had solo shows on the theme of the Silk Road in Washington D.C., New York, Paris, Hamburg, Avignon and Xi’an. Her book Marco Polo on the Silk Road received the Grand Prix Botticelli from the Society of French Poets in 2008. She has had more than 60 solo shows and 200 group shows. Her art works are in numerous public and private collections:

 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Historical Museum, Belgrade; Museum of Applied Arts, Belgrade; Musée Neue Galerie, Graz; National Museum of Kraljevo, Kraljevo; Marciana Library, Venice; British Library, London; New York Public Library, New York; Art Bank, Washington DC; American Embassies Permanent Collection, Washington DC; Office of the Chief Financial Officer Economic Development, Washington D.C.; Fondation Paul Ricard, Ile de Bendor (France); Albert and Victoria Museum, London; Shaanxi Provincial Art Museum, Xi’an, China.

About Aktinos Gallery

Aktinos Gallery is a non-profit organization, which focuses on paintings, sculptures, installations and new media. Here are some of the places where it has has organized shows: Querini Stampalia Venice during the Biennale of Venice, Red Dot Art faire Miami during Miami Basel, American University Paris, etc.

Marco Polo in Venice

Map on the Silk Road

Boat

Marco Polo in China

Silk Road Paintings

Silk Road Map, Acrylic on Paper, 60 x 80 cm

Silk Merchants

The main trade along the Silk Road were spices, precious stones, silk, and rare woods. Some of the merchants never went all the way to China, but purchased their goods from Asian merchants on the Black Sea.

The production of silk by the silk worm was kept secret by the Chinese for a long time. The story is told that it was finally a priest who brought the first silk worms and their secret out of China in his hollow cane. Silk was brought to Europe via Venice or Genoa before being distributed to the final buyers.

Boat of Marco Polo

The merchants of the Silk Road traveled by caravan most of the time, but when possible transported goods by boat. Being Venetian, it was natural that Marco Polo took an interest in boats. He describes Chinese junks, clinker built single decked with numerous (50 – 60) individual cabins for merchants. Many bigger boats could carry 6,000 baskets of spices which would travel typically from Mangi in the China Sea to the Arab port of Hormuz or even on to Alexandria in Egypt, where the local boats were called dhows.  When Marco Polo returned to Venice from his 24 years long journey in China, he purchased his own boat to help in the fight against rival Genoa.

Gobi Desert

When travelers were crossing the Gobi Desert, especially during the night, nobody was allowed to stop, linger behind or separate from the caravan.

To those people who did so, one strange thing happened. They would hear spirits talking and calling them by their name. The travelers got lost and found their death.

The Gobi desert was believed to be full of spirits which talk to people. Sometimes the voyagers would hear a musical instrument, especially drums.

Great Wall of China

The construction of the Great Wall was done many centuries before the travels of Marco Polo, by the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty 221- 206 BC.

It was built to prevent nomads from penetrating into Chinese territory on their horses. The Great China Wall is the only man made architectural object visible from space, and is the longest man made construction on earth: it measures 6,400 km long, 5-7 meters wide and 5-17 meters high.

The Chinese name is literally “ Long Wall of 10,000 Li ”. In fact the number 10,000 in Chinese means infinity. There is a tale that tells that 10 million workers died in building this wall situated in the north of China. It is serving as a frontier with Korea and goes all the way to the Gobi desert.

Marco Polo on the Silk Road

During twenty years, Marco Polo stayed in the service of Kublai Khan. He held a very high position in the government administration. Besides mainland China and India, many islands were described like Java and Sumatra, where trade was flourishing with both known and unknown spices to the western world.