Naxi Dongba Painting

Naxi Dongba painting is the work of the Dongba priests of the Dongba religion, created during ritual and practised in the Gucheng District and Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of Lijiang. It takes the form of wooden-plaque paintings, scroll paintings and card paintings, depicting the gods, ancestral figures and living beings of Naxi belief. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 (item Ⅶ-13) under traditional arts.

Dongba painting is mostly done in natural mineral pigments on linen, native cloth, Dongba paper or wooden plaques, with scroll paintings bordered in blue cloth, a top rod and a bottom axis. Building on native Naxi painting while drawing on Tibetan and Han technique, it uses bold lines, intense colour and archaic forms to depict creation myths, the pantheon and ritual scenes, a living fossil for the study of primal human painting.

Dongba painting is a key vessel of Naxi Dongba culture, forming together with Dongba pictography and scriptures the core of a UNESCO Memory of the World, of irreplaceable value for the study of Naxi religion, art and primal culture.

Dongba paintings and related artefacts can be seen at the Lijiang Museum of Naxi Dongba Culture and the Dongba mural gallery at Yushuizhai.