Mediums and Magical Things

Download or read book Mediums and Magical Things written by Laurel Kendall and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Statues, paintings, and masks—like the bodies of shamans and spirit mediums—give material form and presence to otherwise invisible entities, and sometimes these objects are understood to be enlivened, agentive on their own terms. This book explores how magical images are expected to work with the shamans and spirit mediums who tend and use them in contemporary South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bali, and elsewhere in Asia. It considers how such things are fabricated, marketed, cared for, disposed of, and sometimes transformed into art-market commodities and museum artifacts.