For thousands of years, knowledge holders and storytellers around the world have engaged puppets as a means to dramatize the human experience. Puppets have been delighting, entertaining and educating audiences of all ages, letting our imaginations soar. Puppets are the precious purveyors of our epics, dreams and satires.
Enter into a theatrical world of kings and queens, demons and clowns, supernatural beings and more. Extraordinary stories and fantastical characters fill the stages, cases and multimedia installations of this enchanting exhibition. Whether animated using age-old techniques or digital technologies, puppets are manipulated by hand, and here you’ll discover more about the different forms of manipulation and animation that give them life: shadow, string, rod, hand, and stop-motion. With a focus on Asia, Europe and the Americas, the exhibition draws from MOA’s stunning international collection of puppets—the largest in Western Canada—and reveals new acquisitions from China, Brazil, Sicily, Java, the UK and France.
Shadows, Strings and Other Things is an immersive experience that illuminates how puppetry continues to evolve and innovate in the hands of artists and performers who keep the tradition alive. From graceful Vietnamese water puppets and comical British hand puppets to the captivating stop-motion puppet animation of the award-winning Indigenous artist Amanda Strong—the full spectrum of human resilience and creativity is on display.
Curator: Nicola Levell, Associate Professor, Anthropology, UBC
Discover the artists and performers featured in this exhibition in the Museum Note, or view here
Explore the virtual exhibition website for Shadows, Strings and Other Things