Interview with Maya Stiller‘The Further Back in History You Go, the More Likely it is that Only Inscriptions Remain’

20 September 2024

Photo: Maya Stiller

This winter semester, Maya Stiller is the visiting professor for ‘Gender in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. In this interview, she provides insights into her multidisciplinary research, which lies in the unique intersection between art history, Korean Studies, and Buddhist Studies.

Maya Stiller, please tell us a little about your background and how you got involved with the CSMC.

I was born in Berlin and also studied there. In the early to mid-2000s, I completed both my MA and doctoral degree in East Asian Art History, with focus on Korea. But to study Korean Buddhist art more thoroughly, I wanted to learn more about Korean Buddhism, so I decided to go to the United States, where I earned a PhD in Buddhist Studies at UCLA. Since graduating from there in 2014, I’ve been working in the Art History Department at the University of Kansas, which is one of the very few institutions outside of Korea that has a professorship in Korean art history.

A few years ago, I was invited to the CSMC to give a talk, but we had to postpone it several times until I eventually visited in 2022. The responses were very positive, so we discussed the possibility of me returning for a longer period, which has now been realised in the form of this visiting professorship.

The combination of art history, Korean Studies, and Buddhist Studies is quite unusual. How did it come about?

I have always been interested in religion: Why do people believe in something? What kinds of rituals do they perform, and how is religious belief expressed in the visual culture of a certain place?

My mother is Korean, so I grew up with Korean cultural roots. And in my generation, many people were fascinated by Buddhism, which was seen as this mystical religion from the East. I was part of that wave. Not really understanding what it was, I mainly associated it with meditation, like many others. However, the longer I studied Buddhism and learned about its many facets in pre-modern Asia, the more I realised that it is about much more than meditation.

In 2021, you published Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan, a book about ‘elite graffiti’ in pre-modern Korea. What do you mean by this notion? Isn’t it one of the key features of graffiti that they, unlike many other written artefacts, were normally not produced by the social elites?

Usually, graffiti is associated with urban life, protest art, and defacing public spaces. However, that’s not the case at Kŭmgangsan, a famous mountain that’s currently located in North Korea. Initially, I went there to write a book about the Buddhist heritage of the mountain. But once there, I noticed thousands of rock inscriptions, which I had never seen recorded anywhere. So, I decided to spend my time there documenting these inscriptions instead.

Later, I created a database of these inscriptions. They are the names of people who, from the late 1500s to the 1930s, carved their names into the rock. I found about 4,500 names, which is just the tip of the iceberg. Most people wrote their names in ink because they lacked the resources and agency to have them carved into stone. What remains today is mostly the work of the elite.

Why did the elite do this?

In the 15th and 16th centuries, this practice was primarily done by government officials who had been stationed in the area. When they travelled to the mountain, they wanted the monks to carve their names as a visual claim of their status. Later, these officials invited their friends and family, including sons, uncles, and nephews, so we got these clusters of inscriptions featuring the male names of a family as visual evidence of their political and socio-economic power. But then, this carving practice spread to other social groups. In the 18th and 19th centuries, we see the names of non-elite individuals such as monks, technocrats, and eunuchs. By the 19th century, the elite had largely lost their hegemony over the mountain. That’s what the book is about. I talk about how the elite used the mountain to create an eternal memory of themselves, and how this practice changed over time.

Buddhist temples were not just centres of religious practice but also cultural centres.

In general, what role do inscriptions play in your research?

Inscriptions are extremely important, particularly for the early history of Buddhism. We find them, for example, in ancient South Asian temples, in central Asian cave-shrines, and across Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan. Sculptures and paintings may get lost over time, but what’s been carved into stone or bronze objects oftentimes survives. The further back in history you go, the more likely it is that only inscriptions remain. For art historians, inscriptions are vital sources of information about paintings or sculptures: Who made them and when? Who were the donors, and what were their motivations? That’s why research on visual culture and inscriptions go hand in hand.

What will you be working on during your time at the CSMC?

I am currently writing a book about Korean Buddhist temple architecture. When you enter a temple hall, there is usually a central altar with a sculpture, behind which a painting is installed. So far, art historians have primarily focused on these centrally enshrined icons. My book looks at interstitial spaces, which refers to these small niches in the walls and ceiling. I think it is very important to consider what the artists were doing with these marginal spaces: What’s their relationship to the main Buddha? What kind of story are they telling, and how do they differ from what’s centrally enshrined?

More specifically, I have created a database with over 45,000 high-resolution photographs and 350 immersive 4K 360-degree video recordings of temple architecture. My preliminary conclusion after examining some of this data is that, to some extent, these paintings support the main narrative. For example, if the central Buddha is an Amitābha, to whom people pray to for a good rebirth, the interstitial paintings are often related to the Pure Land of Amitābha. But I also found many secular scenes, for example from popular novels, Korean oral narratives, or ancient Chinese legends. So, I argue that Buddhist temples were not just centres of religious practice but also cultural centres. They were places where people received moral messages that did not necessarily have anything to do with Buddhism, and they also provided entertainment. In Buddhist spaces in Korea, we find a variety of elements, both religious and secular, within a single architectural framework.

Additionally, for the book, I will launch a YouTube channel that people can use to virtually explore these temples and view the paintings and inscriptions. During my time here, my goal is to complete a full draft of the book and decide which material should be included on the YouTube channel.