A new exhibition arriving at the Museum of Chinese and Ethnographic Art in Parma: from 13 November 2022 to 14 January 2023: "Asia" . It was born from the great project "Favole dei 4 continenti" produced by the Museum of Viale San Martino and by the EMI publishing house.

This work, through the publication of 4 volumes, aims to enhance the great work of collecting, transcribing and translating fairy tales of non-European peoples, carried out by the Xaverian Missionaries during their centenary work.

The fable is one of the oldest narrative traditions. It has always been a common thread between generations. Its transmission, far from its original context, makes use of the work of many travelers who in modern and contemporary times have imprinted those words, narrated or sung, on paper. They translated the texts from the indigenous languages into the official languages of the countries of origin and then back into Italian. Among those travelers are the Xaverians, a missionary congregation founded in Parma by San Guido Maria Conforti in 1895.

The aim of the project is to bring traditional fairy tales to the knowledge of the general public so that great human values imbued with experience and tradition can inspire new Western generations.

Each tale is accompanied by an illustration, which may be important for the reader to approach the styles and symbols of a distant world. Four different female artists have been called to give shape and color to the tales of the different continents. The first volume, published by the EMI publishing house and illustrated by Valentina Bongiovanni with an oriental style and trait, is dedicated to Asia . It is no coincidence that the artistic dimension has been entrusted to four women. If the great work of saving and transcribing the fairy tales was the responsibility of a large male missionary body, the illustrative counterpart is deliberately female. A continuous testimony of the great dialogue between generations, peoples, and even genres of the world.