Soft and resilient: When embroidery encounters narrating the Nanjing Massacre in the Memorial Hall

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe paper engages directly with ‘Xuefang Liang’s Embroidery Art Exhibition’ held at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders as a departure point for investigating the narrative presentation of the Nanjing Massacre through artistic practice. The exhibition uses embroidery images to tell the stories of foreigners who established the Nanking Safety Zone to protect and help refugees during the Nanjing Massacre. The materiality and cultural significance of the embroidery art is used to enrich and better interpret the meaning-making space of the trauma narrative. Meanwhile, embroidery exhibits, as the material expression of the human factors in intangible cultural heritage, are critical to generating emotions from intimate contact between objects and people. Further, the visitors’ prior sensory memories facilitate the embodiment of emotions, which in turn provides ways to strengthen the visitors’ ability to derive meanings from museum engagement.KEYWORDS: Embroiderythe Nanjing Massacretraumatic narrativesensory memories AcknowledgementsThanks to Yi Wu from The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders for grateful help. I also thank sincerely anonymous reviewers and editors for their comments and feedback.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. http://www.19371213.com.cn/en/about/museum/202007/t20200710_2236058.html2. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/U5Zqr4tlD1ZNqkrN5Hpbkg Accessed 14 May 2020.3. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/olmfpNrEPT1Ql8PmB7QH_w Accessed 16 May 2020.4. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/uoUo8Loa-L_nLjlEWU1q9Q Accessed 17 May 2020.5. https://m.weibo.cn/status/4744422443717663?sourceType=weixin&from=10C8295010&wm=9006_2001&featurecode=newtitleAdditional informationNotes on contributorsHongfang SunHongfang Sun (2467571036@qq.com) is a PhD candidate at Department of Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Museology, Zhejiang University. She is interested in difficult heritage and museums, exploring the relationship between memory and emotion in visitors’ engagement.Jianqiang YanJianqiang Yan (yanjq9911@163.com) is a professor at Department of Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Museology, Zhejiang University. He researches in Museology.