JEWEL BENEATH THE VERMILION is an exhibition of traditional lacquer painting marking the exclusive collaboration between SonMani and the artist Robert Beer. Here, the exacting line work of Vajrayana Buddhist art is reimagined in the native language of Vietnamese lacquer — sơn ta resin, vermilion, eggshell and hand-inlaid detail.
Each work in the exhibition is a meeting of two cultural currents. One rises from the Indo-Himalayan world, bearing a vast and sacred order of symbols. The other runs deep in the Vietnamese soul — the very material that lends its solemn, contemplative gravity to the architecture and sacred statuary of temple and pagoda. At their confluence, each painting is no longer bound to its religious subject, but opens into a space of inner contemplation.
The exhibition invites the viewer to slow down, to listen, and to enter into ‘dialogue with the deity’. It is, in truth, a dialogue with one’s own mind — looking deeply into restlessness, longing, sorrow and hope — and recognising there the jewel of compassion and wisdom, whole and luminous within each of us.
