How visual culture preserves heritage across generations

Winter is the ripe time for festivals – there are literary festivals, art shows and biennales that are making an artistic mark in our region. This year’s Muscat Nights festival is no exception to this celebration, as it combines visual arts with history and heritage.
Tangible cultural heritage typically includes paintings, photographs, artefacts, even sites and monuments significant in cultural histories. It generally comments on the history and cultural facets of a nation.
Art is an important way in which cultural heritage is not only retained, but is also introduced and disseminated. This is because art enables one to visualise history in ways that are difficult to do in other formats, like long-form reading or archaeological texts.
The various installations, art shows and the design week showcased in Muscat Nights are a glaring example of the way that art can function in ways that help to create a strong national identity through pride in shared visual elements.
Art carries the history of people, places and power. Paintings, sculptures, songs, dances, and murals record myths, victories, struggles, rituals, and everyday life. Even when words and books disappear, these visual forms retain and reflect the strength of a community.
Art also helps to pass culture across generations. When shown in the form of crafts, music and physical performances, art can be appreciated by both watching and actually practicing and doing them.
Images of elders performing traditional dances, creating time-honoured dishes, and even engaging in traditional crafts like carving and weaving show how heritage can be passed on to younger generations through practice, not just passive retention and memory.
Visual art also protects language and communication. This is because artistic installations often use locally used symbolic and metaphoric language. This includes calligraphy, visual motifs and patterns, which keep endangered languages and meanings from disappearing. A corollary to this is that art helps to strengthen cultural identity.
The creation of art reminds us of our origins, roots and journeys. It builds an understanding of the complex ways in which history intertwines with ordinary people and builds pride and belonging. This is especially true for communities that have struggled and faced historical challenges and need to retain these stories for the future.
Heritage is not a concept that is frozen in time. The real value of art is that heritage is interpreted by artists in multiple ways, usually in keeping with contemporary audiences. Often blending old techniques to depict new themes, art ensures that traditional culture stays alive instead of just being an item in a museum.
As the Muscat Nights, with its global audience shows, art connects people across the world. In spite of all our differences, art travels across cultures to remind us of the oneness of the human experience.
Whether it is film, music or artistic installations, local heritage is shared through a collective and collaborative platform. In many ways, art is cultural memory, which is alive and thriving.
It goes beyond being just a repository of memory and offers opportunities to practice it, feel it and share it across generations.

Dr Sandhya Rao Mehta

The writer is Associate Professor, Sultan Qaboos University