How do the people of a morally shattered culture and nation find ways to go on living? Cambodians confronted this challenge following the collective disasters of the American bombing, the civil war, and the Khmer Rouge genocide. The magnitude of violence and human loss, the execution of artists and intellectuals, the erasure of individual and institutional cultural memory all caused great damage to Cambodian arts, culture, and society. Author Boreth Ly explores the "traces" of this haunting past in order to understand how Cambodians at home and in the diasporas deal with trauma on such a vast scale. Ly maintains that the production of visual culture by contemporary Cambodian artists and writers-photographers, filmmakers, court dancers, and poets-embodies traces of trauma, scars leaving an indelible mark on the body and the psyche. His book considers artists of different generations and family experiences: a Cambodian-American woman whose father sent her as a baby to the United States to be adopted; the Cambodian-French film-maker, Rithy Panh, himself a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, whose film The Missing Picture was nominated for an Oscar in 2014; a young Cambodian artist born in 1988-part of the "post-memory" generation. The works discussed include a variety of materials and remnants from the historical past: the broken pieces of a shattered clay pot, the scarred landscape of bomb craters, the traditional symbolism of the checkered scarf called krama, as well as the absence of a visual archive. Boreth Ly's poignant book explores obdurate traces that are fragmented and partial, like the acts of remembering and forgetting. His interdisciplinary approach, combining art history, visual studies, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, religion, and philosophy, is particularly attuned to the diverse body of material discussed in his book, which includes photographs, video installations, performance art, poetry, and mixed media. By analyzing these works through the lens of trauma, he shows how expressions of a national trauma can contribute to healing and the reclamation of national identity.

Shamans depicted walking on knives, fairies shown riding on clouds, kings astride dragon mounts: some find such pictures unsettling, some charming. Pursued by collectors, venerated as the seats of gods, Korean shaman paintings are all of these things. Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon explore what it is that makes these works magical or sacred-more than """"just paintings."""" What does it mean for a picture to carry the trace of a god? Once animated and revered, can it ever be a mere painting again? How have shaman paintings been revalued as art? Do artfulness and magic ever intersect? Is the market value of a painting influenced by whether or not it was once a sacred object? Navigating the journey shaman paintings make from painters' studios to shaman shrines to private collections and museums, the three authors deftly navigate the borderland between scholarly interests in the production and consumption of material religion and the consumption and circulation of art. Illustrated with sixty images in color and black and white, the book offers a new vantage point on """"the social life of things."""" This is not the story of a collecting West and a disposing rest: the primary collectors and commentators on Korean shaman paintings are South Koreans re-imagining their own past in light of their own modernist sensibility. It is a tale that must be told together with the recent history of South Korea and an awareness of the problematic question of how the paintings are understood by different South Korean actors-most particularly the shamans and collectors who share a common language and sometimes meet face-to-face.

Between 1885 and 1891 the Swiss pastor Wilfried Spinner sojourned in Japan on behalf of the East Asian mission. He founded the first Christian parishes in Tokyo and Yokohama and began to intensively teach there. However, his interest was also directed at local beliefs, which informed the everyday lives of the population. He brought back to Europe around eighty religious scrolls, comprising some painted hanging scrolls and numerous black-and-white prints (ofuda). Ofuda are paper amulets featuring representations of important deities, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, which were printed in and distributed from temples. Some of them additionally feature calligraphy, which was written by the monks in the presence of the pilgrims. They are evidence to their pilgrimage and accompany them onwards as protection and good luck charms. The recently discovered collection of Wilfried Spinner in the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich covers a broad spectrum both figuratively and in content. Text in English, German, and Japanese.

A boxed set containing Every Thread a Story and The Secret Language of Miao Embroidery, this culmination highlights artists and textiles from the Guizhou Province of China. Every Thread a Story is a tribute to ethnic minority artisans of China's Guizhou Province. It is also a tribute to the heritage craft traditions and techniques passed down through the generations of their families. The book introduces more than a dozen contemporary artists from four ethnic groups working in the techniques of their ancestors, including indigo dyers, embroiderers of varying techniques, weavers, a metalsmith, and a paper maker. A wide-ranging look to the future questions the effects of tourism and modern development on the craft and culture of southeast Guizhou Province. The Secret Language of Miao Embroidery presents, for the first-time, expert interpretations of the Miao symbols and motifs embellished on traditional clothing of the Miao peoples of China. Using examples from pieces in a museum's collection, the author provides clear descriptions and stories for 60 symbols and motifs found in highly collectible Miao textiles, focusing on southeast Guizhou Province. Detailed colour photographs accompany each motif. Both are paperback books: Every Thread a Story contains 160 pages and The Secret Language of Miao Embroidery contains 64 pages.