Following the Silk Routes and Beyond in Vancouver

Following the Silk Routes and Beyond

2016

Shaking Hands with our Neighbours

Following the Silk Routes and beyond is an interactive visual exhibition celebrating the past and present of exchange and multiculturalism and will be part of the Asian Heritage Month events taking place during the month of May in Vancouver.

Societies connect, change, and adapt thanks to the networks we naturally create. The trade routes that connected Asia and the European continent opened doors to trade, art, cuisine, migration, and sometimes sicknesses and conflicts. Even when emperors built walls and sent armies to control these exchanges, culture trickled through sandy deserts, oases, and oceans.

Traveling the Silk Routes by land or sea then was not easy; it required skill, strength, the ability to negotiate and to network on every city and port. Now the world has shrunk, and what used to take months or even years to reach a destination is a finger click away. Fast internet and web networks have made our exchanges so easy that we barely think about the past, but the legacy of the ancient exchanges and trade ways, echoes in our everyday lives helping us interact better and more than ever in today’s world.

“Following the Silk Routes and Beyond “ in Vancouver will portray visual examples of spaces and commercial networks in Asia, and the impact that these trading paths had on world culture and perspectives in modern life. It is a photographic caravan that will open our imagination to the wonder of discovery, and will tickle our curiosity to finding interesting places to exchange and network here in Vancouver, taking the journey will prove worthwhile.

The exhibition runs from April the 17^th to May 31st at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver (555 Columbia Street, Vancouver BC) in Chinatown.

Leticia Sanchez

Chair Curator & Project Creator