Mayan art brightens up Shanghai

People in Shanghai got a chance this weekend to try their hand at creating some unique folk art from Mexico. A group of artists demonstrated how to carve wooden totems and paint them with traditional designs.

For three hours on Saturday, these students got to work with an art form that was completely new to them. These brightly-colored sculptures at the Cervantes Library in Xuhui district are called alebrijes - images of animals from ancient Mayan mythology carved from wood and then covered in oil paint. Though the first alebrijes were only created in 1936, the traditional designs go back nearly 3000 years.

The students, both Chinese and expats, had to work with the ten traditional colors that Mexican artists normally use. They said that wasn't easy.

Zhang Bin, student, said, "The patterns are quite different from ours. We have traditional clouds, copper coins and bats. They have traditional Mexican geometric patterns. I'll try to use all ten colors and try to make some other combination of colors. I'm drawing everything I thought about. Later maybe I can get some new ideas based on the brochure."

Tatiana Soler, Spanish expat, said, "I'm very colorful person so I love warm colors I don't know why. Here you're painting on the wood so it has very different technique. First you need to cover the wood with plastic colors, plastic paintings."

Instructor Chantal Abrajan from Mexico City says she wants to introduce this Mexican intangible cultural heritage to China because of its resonance with the Chinese culture that also has a very long history.

Chantal Abrajan, Mexican artist, said, "We have today's this workshop of Alebrijes because last September we held an exhibition at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts Museum that was amazing. And the main point of this is try our best to share this amazing culture, this Mexican culture with the Chinese people. Alebrijes has made by wood that the name is copal wood. From the fleure of the wood, it has some kind of powders. So this powder will mix with different things and we can create colors. The masters, the artists for this kind of handicraft are normal people. They grow in small villages and they have all this knowledge about how to make it because the parents of parents of parents teach this kind of things."

Abrajan says she's also planning to start a workshop on Huaihai(淮海) Road in downtown Jing'an District for people who want to learn more about this unique Mexican artform.