Between the Material Object and its Representation: Chinese Garments on Non-Chinese Bodies at the Sino-African Exhibition of 1911–1912 in Finland

Abstract

<p>This article explores the effects of cultural cross-dressing on the balance between the material object and its representation in the context of exhibitions. It builds on Timothy Mitchell’s ideas of the exhibitionary order to demonstrate how early twentieth-century western exhibition practices were not uniform but open to experimentation in order to produce increasingly effective displays. The article focuses on the Sino-African missionary exhibition arranged in Finland in 1911–1912 in which mannequins and dress racks were replaced by living displays. Thus, exhibition visitors encountered the organizer and his assistants dressed in traditional brightly-coloured Chinese costumes. In addition to revealing a variety of motives and purposes behind this unorthodox handling and presentation of clothes, the article draws attention to the intertwinement of bodies and dresses originating from different cultures and to the meanings they bring to each other and to the exhibition as a whole. Cultural cross-dressing served to create a lively, multisensory and spectacular show, and it was an effective tool, in the context of the Sino-African missionary exhibition, for making Chinese material culture intelligible and meaningful to its audience. This particular mode of representation both blurred and heightened the spectator’s experience of cultural difference between East and West.<br /></p>