This work starts with a simple belief: art doesn’t only happen in museums – and it definitely doesn’t only happen in Europe.
Because stories, colours and styles travel.
And because it’s endlessly fascinating to watch what happens to art when cultures meet – sometimes gently, sometimes with a crash.
I’m Tina – creative educator and art historian – and I genuinely believe that art is not an elitist discipline.
No velvet gloves. No whisper-only museum rules.
Art is not something you have to “behave” around.
I want people to discover art without pathos, without fear of “getting it wrong”.
Because, as Picasso once said, everyone is an artist – especially as a child.
And Joseph Beuys later made it even clearer: every human being is an artist. Full stop.
For me, that means we don’t just look at canvases.
We look behind them.
We talk about where art comes from, how it changes, and why it is so much more than just “pretty pictures”.
We take stories and myths out of museum catalogues and place them into a new context – connected to today, meant to make us think, to question, and above all to start conversations about our
incredibly complex world.
Although, honestly, the world has probably always been complex.
Who gets to write art history?
For a long time, colonial powers believed they didn’t just own land and resources –
but also the editorial rights to art history.
We’re mainly talking about the 19th and early 20th century, when large parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania were under European control.
What’s often overlooked is this: these regions already had rich, highly developed artistic traditions.
Art that had grown over centuries.
With its own visual languages, materials, techniques and symbols.
They didn’t need cultural education from Paris or London.
They already had something unmistakably their own.
The colonial powers came anyway.
And they didn’t come empty-handed.
They brought art schools.
Entire curricula.
And an unspoken goal: to establish their own aesthetic standards.
If not fully European in style, then at least with subjects that suited European taste.
Local myths, gods and stories?
Nice folklore – but preferably kept out of “serious” art.
There are countless examples of this.
But let me share two that I find particularly fascinating.
Vietnam: lacquer, Cubism and a mythical superhero
In Vietnam, the French arrived in 1856.
Like someone who moves in, never unregisters – and stays far too long.
They left only in the mid-20th century, after the Vietnamese very clearly asked them to go.
But while colonialism tried to impose order, something else happened beneath the surface:
cultures collided, resisted, absorbed – and quietly transformed each other.
That’s where Nguyen Tu Nghiem comes in.
In 1990, he painted Giong.
Not a shy boy – but Vietnam’s mythical superhero.
A legendary warrior on an iron horse, fighting invaders in an epic battle.
The technique is traditional Vietnamese lacquer painting – a method with roots in East Asia, refined in Vietnam until it almost glows.
Gold. Silver. Tiny fragments of eggshell embedded in the surface.
And then comes the unexpected twist: Cubism.
An art movement born in early 20th-century France, where artists like Picasso and Braque abandoned polite perspective and decided to show multiple viewpoints at once.
As if wind were blowing through the image – scattering forms, reassembling them sharper, freer, bolder.
In Giong, three worlds collide in a single image:
centuries-old Vietnamese lacquer tradition,
rebellious French Cubism,
and a deeply Vietnamese story of resistance and independence.
In the legend, Giong fights against foreign invaders.
And Nghiem tells this story using a visual language that doesn’t submit to one single tradition – it lets them exist side by side.
Nghiem once said he only looked to Vietnamese history for inspiration.
Which is charming – because Cubism doesn’t exactly grow on the banks of the Mekong River.
In 2017, Giong was declared a national treasure.
Red for wealth. Silver for strength.
And a clear message: We are more than the art schools of our colonisers.
India: realism, gods and quiet rebellion
From Vietnam, we travel west – across the Bay of Bengal to India.
Here too, colonial powers arrived with art schools in tow.
British curricula.
Rigid perspective exercises.
And a very clear idea of what “proper art” should look like.
Indian spirituality?
Lovely. Decorative.
But not something you’d hang in a serious salon.
Then came Raja Ravi Varma.
He lived in the 19th century, at a time when India was ruled like an oversized suburb of London.
The British brought railways, teacups – and oil painting.
Varma mastered European realism perfectly.
And then he did something quietly radical.
He painted Indian gods.
One of his most famous works shows Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.
She stands barefoot on a lotus flower.
Elephants spray water behind her.
Her red sari shimmers with gold.
The painting looks entirely European in technique – perfect perspective, soft light, carefully rendered folds.
Except for one detail.
Lakshmi has four arms.
A calm but powerful statement on canvas:
I can master your technique – but I will tell my stories.
And Varma didn’t stop at museums.
He had his images printed.
Posters, calendars, small affordable prints.
Lakshmi entered living rooms, temples and tea houses.
Pop culture – long before Instagram.
He took the tools of colonial power and turned them around until they told stories rooted deeply in Indian identity.
What connects these stories?
Nguyen Tu Nghiem and Raja Ravi Varma lived in different countries, different cultures, different centuries.
But they share something essential.
Both lived under colonial rule.
Both were trained in systems that tried to define what art should be.
And both took those rules, bent them, and filled them with their own stories.
Nghiem wrapped a legend of Vietnamese resistance in Cubist fragmentation.
Varma let a Hindu goddess step confidently into European realism.
For me, this is the most beautiful conclusion of all:
Culture cannot be occupied.
It can be suppressed.
Foreign rules can be imposed.
But culture always finds a way to reclaim its voice.
Sometimes quietly.
Sometimes loudly.
Sometimes by taking the tools of others and creating something that could only come from its own history.
Art is not a museum shelf
Art is not a neatly arranged museum shelf.
It’s more like a shared kitchen.
Someone always brings spices back from a journey.
Recipes change.
And in the end, everything tastes a little different.
And often – a lot better.
So the next time someone talks about “pure culture”,
think of Giong galloping through Cubism on an iron horse.
And of Lakshmi glowing in European realism while elephants splash in the background.
Art travels.
Styles mix.
And sometimes, that’s where the most beautiful stories begin.