'Routes and Remedies' is a multimedia showcase being held at Asia House from 30 September to 7 October 2006, hightlighting the living traditions of Asian medicines and body cultures found throughout the Asian Diaspora and its British descendants. The show explores the creation and recreation of Asian cultural identity through everyday practice by bringing together Asian ideas about the body, beauty, health and illness, growing up, love and marriage and sexual health, and examines what it means to be Asian and living in the UK today.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Arts Council England, the team responsible for this project are based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. Dr Vivienne Lo, Lecturer of history of Chinese Medicine, explains "With a team made up of London based Asian artists, designers, parents, health workers, body artists and cooks, we have been capturing traditional techniques of health and well-being preserved among Asian communities based in the UK. This unique exhibition reveals for the first time some of our archive film, recipes and art as part of a series of exciting new installations on display at Asia House".

From inner alchemy to oral hygiene, this exhibition celebrates the lineage of Asian healing practices. 'Routes & Remedies' takes visitors on a trip around the living traditions of Asian health and well-being in London: food, exercise, medicines, meditation and prayer. Following the great success of the 'Asia, Body, Mind & Spirit' exhibition in 2004, Asia House is the perfect host for this new exhibition. Visitors can record themselves in a film-me booth, listen to tales of transformation in a Mongolian ger (yurt), explore the drawers of an Asian medicine cabinet and leave offerings at a new look Asian ancestral shrine.

During the exhibition a programme of events will be taking place; including classes and demonstrations of Asian exercise, traditions, treatments and therapies. Over the last 18 month, the 'Routes & Remedies' team has also been working with primary schools in the London borough of Westminster and Camden. Central to the school's project are arts workshops led by Artistic Director Chila Burman, who uses images and activities associated with Asian medicine, food and family life to enable young people to express their own ideas and experiences.

Top