Liz Perry’s exhibition of Khmer textiles at the National Multicultural Festival in Canberra is hoped to spark interest in Cambodia’s rich tradition of weaving, an Australian newspaper reported Saturday.
The show, which opens for three weeks starting Thursday, includes examples of temple banners and clothing Perry collected as she researched a master’s thesis on the preservation of traditional Cambodian textile crafts in the early 1990s, according to the Canberra Times.
Traveling to remote villages, she found that despite decades of civil strife, traditional textile practices have been faithfully maintained.
One temple banner depicting scenes from the life of Buddha features so much detail that viewers can see the layered roofs with their curved eaves and delicate designs on the skirts of floating apsaras.
