Arts by region - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

African art

African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...

reflects the diversity of African cultures. The oldest existing art from Africa are 6,000-year old carvings found in Niger

Niger

Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...

, while the Great Pyramid of Giza

Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact...

in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

was the world's tallest architectural accomplishment for 4,000 years until the creation of the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...

. The Ethiopian complex of monolithic church

Monolithic church

A monolithic church or rock-hewn church is a church made from a single block of stone. They are one of the most basic forms of monolithic architecture....

es at Lalibela

Lalibela

Lalibela is a town in northern Ethiopia, known for its monolithic churches. Lalibela is one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, second only to Aksum, and is a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. Unlike Aksum, the population of Lalibela is almost completely Ethiopian Orthodox Christian...

, of which the Church of Saint George is representative, is regarded as another marvel of engineering.

Dance
The term African dance

African dance

African dance refers mainly to the dance of Sub-Saharan Africa, and more appropriately African dances because of the many cultural differences in musical and movement styles...

refers mainly to the dances of subsaharan Africa. The music and dances of northern Africa and the Sahara are generally more closely connected to those of the Near East. Also the dances of immigrants of European and Asian descent (e.g. in South Africa) are not covered by this article.

African dance has to be viewed in close connection with African Music.

A central trait of African dance is that it is polycentric. This means that - unlike many other regions of the world - the body is not treated as a "stiff" unit but is segmented into several centers of movement (shoulders, chest, pelvis, arms, legs etc.) that may be moved according to different rhythmical components of the music or even add rhythmical components of their own. This may result in very complex movements "inside" the body, as opposed to the movement through space of the whole body that plays the most important role in many European choreographies.

Music
The music of Africa

Music of Africa

Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from sub-Saharan African music traditions....

is one of its most dynamic art forms. Egypt has long been a cultural focus of the Arab world, while remembrance of the rhythms of sub-Saharan Africa, in particular west Africa, was transmitted through the Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...

to modern samba

Samba

Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...

, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

, rap, and rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

. Modern music of the continent includes the highly complex choral singing of southern Africa and the dance rhythms of soukous

Soukous

Soukous is a dance music genre that originated in the two neighbouring countries of Belgian Congo and French Congo during the 1930s and early 1940s, and which has gained popularity throughout Africa...

, dominated by the music of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A recent development of the twenty first century is the emergence of African hip hop

African hip hop

Hip hop music has been popular in Africa since the early 1980s due to widespread American influence. In 1985 hip hop reached Senegal, a French-speaking country in West Africa. Some of the first Senegalese rappers were M.C. Lida, M.C. Solaar, and Positive Black Soul, who mixed rap with Mbalax, a...

. In particular, a form from Senegal

Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...

is blended with traditional mbalax

Mbalax

Mbalax is the national popular dance music of Senegal and The Gambia. Mbalax is a fusion of popular Western music and dance such as jazz, soul, Latin, and rock blended with sabar, the traditional drumming and dance music of Senegal...

. Recently in South Africa, a form of music related to house music

House music

House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...

known under the name Kwaito

Kwaito

Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1990s. It is a variant of house music featuring the use of African sounds and samples. Typically at a slower tempo range than other styles of house music, Kwaito often contains catchy melodic and percussive loop samples,...

has developed, although the country has been home to its own form of South African jazz

South African jazz

South African jazz is the jazz music of South Africa, also often mistakenly called "African jazz".-History:As in the United States, South African jazz was strongly influenced by the music styles of the black population. That said influences from the US led to its formation...

for some time, while Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

music is completely distinct and composed mostly of traditional Boere musiek, and forms of folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

and rock

Rock and roll

music.

Canada

Main articles: Culture of Canada

Culture of Canada

Canadian culture is a term that explains the artistic, musical, literary, culinary, political and social elements that are representative of Canada and Canadians, not only to its own population, but people all over the world. Canada's culture has historically been influenced by European culture and...

Canadian culture has historically been heavily influenced by English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

, French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

, Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

, Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

and Aboriginal

Aboriginal peoples in Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" have fallen into disuse in Canada and are commonly considered pejorative....

cultures and traditions, and over time has been greatly influenced by American culture due to its proximity and the interchange of human capital

Human capital

Human capitalis the stock of competencies, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value. It is the attributes gained by a worker through education and experience...

. Many forms of American media and entertainment are popular, if not dominant in Canada; conversely, many Canadian cultural products and entertainers are successful in the US and worldwide. Many cultural products are now marketed toward a unified "North American" market, or a global market generally.

The creation and preservation of more distinctly Canadian culture has been partly influenced by federal government programs, laws and institutions such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

(CBC), the National Film Board of Canada

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...

(NFB), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

United States

Music in the United States

Music of the United States

The music of the United States reflects the country's multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. Among the country's most internationally-renowned genres are hip hop, blues, country, rhythm and blues, jazz, barbershop, pop, techno, and rock and roll. The United States has the...

also traces to the country's melting-pot population through a diverse array of styles. Rock and roll

Rock and roll

, hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

, country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

, blues

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

, and jazz

Jazz

are among the country's most internationally renowned genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

s. Since the late 19th century, popular recorded music from the United States has become increasingly known across the world, such that some forms of American popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

are heard almost everywhere.
However, not all American culture is derived from some other form found elsewhere in the world. For example, the birth of cinema

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

, as well as its radical development, can largely be traced back to the United States. In 1878, the first recorded instance of sequential photographs capturing and reproducing motion was Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...

's series of a running horse, which the British-born photographer produced in Palo Alto

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

, California, using a row of still cameras. Since then, the American film industry, centered in Hollywood, California, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world. Other areas of development include the comic book

American comic book

An American comic book is a small magazine originating in the United States and containing a narrative in the form of comics. Since 1975 the dimensions have standardized at 6 5/8" x 10 ¼" , down from 6 ¾" x 10 ¼" in the Silver Age, although larger formats appeared in the past...

and Disney's animated film

Animated cartoon

An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...

s, which saw widespread popularity and influence, especially in Japanese anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

and manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

and Chinese animation

Chinese animation

Chinese animation or Manhua Anime, in narrow sense, refers to animations that are made in China. In broad sense, it may refers to animations that are made in any Chinese speaking countries such as People's Republic of China , Republic of China , Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.- History :The...

and manhua

Manhua

Manhua are Chinese comics originally produced in China. Possibly due to their greater degree of artistic freedom of expression and closer international ties with Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan have been the places of publication of most manhua thus far, often including Chinese translations of...

Asia

Asian art

Asian art can refer to art amongst many cultures in Asia.-Various types of Asian art:*Afghan art*Azerbaijanian art*Balinese art*Bhutanese art*Buddhist art*Burmese contemporary art*Chinese art*Eastern art*Indian art*Iranian art*Islamic art...

, music

Asian music

Asian music encompasses numerous different musical styles originating from a large number of Asian countries.Musical traditions in Asia* Music of Central Asia** Music of Afghanistan** Music of Kazakhstan** Music of Mongolia** Music of Uzbekistan...

, as well as literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, are important parts of Asian culture. Harmonic music can follow the pentatonic scale

Pentatonic scale

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...

as well as the twelve-tone scale; percussive music can use cymbals as well as gongs, in Asia.

Architecture
In Japan, the temples of Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

and Nara

Nara, Nara

is the capital city of Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The city occupies the northern part of Nara Prefecture, directly bordering Kyoto Prefecture...

might be over 1,000 years old in style, but are completely rebuilt, in the same style, every few generations or so. The primary reason for this was that the materials might be wood and thatch rather than stone and tile.

Other cultures might build from stone, but the jungles and forests might overgrow the buildings, as in Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu,...

.

Literature
Early-Modern Japanese literature (17th–19th centuries) developed innovations such as haiku

Haiku

' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...

, a form of Japanese poetry

Japanese poetry

Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

that evolved from the ancient hokku

Hokku

is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, renga, or of its later derivative, renku . From the time of Matsuo Bashō , the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun , and haiga...

(Japanese language

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

: 発句) mode. Haiku consists of three lines: the first and third lines each have five morae (the rough phonological

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

equivalent of syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

s), while the second has seven. Original haiku masters included such figures as Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

poet Matsuo Bashō

Matsuo Basho

, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku...

(松尾芭蕉); others influenced by Bashō include Kobayashi Issa

Kobayashi Issa

, was a Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū sect known for his haiku poems and journals. He is better known as simply , a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea...

and Masaoka Shiki

Masaoka Shiki

, pen-name of Masaoka Noboru , was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry...

.

Dance
In Punjab, India, bhangra is popular.

In all countries in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

, dance is an integral part of the culture. There are courtly dances, found, for example, wherever there are Rajah

Raja

Raja is an Indian term for a monarch, or princely ruler of the Kshatriya varna...

s and princess

Princess

Princess is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or his daughters....

es. There are also dances of celebration. For example, according to oral history, in 1212, when 10 Bornean

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

datu

Datu

Datu is the title for tribal chiefs, sovereign princes, and monarchs in the Visayas and Mindanao Regions of the Philippines. Together with Lakan , Apo in Central and Northern Luzon, Sultan and Rajah, they are titles used for native royalty, and are still currently used in the Philippines...

s left the rule of Sri Vijayan empire on Borneo

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

, they sailed away and negotiated settlement rights with the chieftain of the Negrito

Negrito

The Negrito are a class of several ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia.Their current populations include 12 Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands, six Semang peoples of Malaysia, the Mani of Thailand, and the Aeta, Agta, Ati, and 30 other peoples of the Philippines....

s on the island of Panay

Panay

Panay may refer to*Panay Island*Panay *Panay, Capiz*Panay River*Panay Gulf* USS Panay *Panay incident...

. In commemoration of the agreement, they danced; the Negritos danced as well.

Music
The music of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

is as vast and unique as the many cultures and peoples who inhabit the region. The one constant throughout the musical landscape is Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

, which defines the music's focus and the musicians' inspiration.

Principal instrument types are two- or three-stringed lute

Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

s, the necks either fretted or fretless; fiddle

Fiddle

The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...

s made of horsehair; flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

s, mostly open at both ends and either end-blown or side-blown; and jaw harps, either metal or, often in Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, wooden. Percussion instrument

Percussion instrument

A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

s include frame drums, tambourines, and kettledrums.

Instrumental polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

is achieved primarily by lutes and fiddles. On the other hand, vocal polyphony is achieved in different ways: Bashkirs hum a basic pitch while playing solo flute.

Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

Europe has been a cradle for many cultural innovations and movements, often at odds with each other such as Christian proselytism

Proselytism

Proselytizing is the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion. The word proselytize is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix προσ- and the verb ἔρχομαι in the form of προσήλυτος...

and Humanism

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, that have consequently been spread across the globe. The Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

of classical ideas influenced the development of art and literature

European literature

European literature refers to the literature of Europe.European literature includes literature in many languages; among the most important of the modern written works are those in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech and Russian and works by the...

far beyond the confines of the continent.

Visual art

Beyond the rich tradition of indigenous art, the development of Latin American visual art owed much to the influence of Spanish, Portuguese and French Baroque painting, which in turn often followed the trends of the Italian Masters. In general, this artistic Eurocentrism began to fade in the early twentieth century, as Latin-Americans began to acknowledge the uniqueness of their condition and started to follow their own path.

An important artistic movement generated in Latin America is Mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

ismo represented by Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

, David Alfaro Siqueiros

David Alfaro Siqueiros

José David Alfaro Siqueiros was a social realist painter, known for his large murals in fresco that helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance, together with works by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and also a member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an...

, José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...

and Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences....

in Mexico and Santiago Martinez Delgado

Santiago Martínez Delgado

Santiago Martínez Delgado was a Colombian painter, sculptor, art historian and writer. He established a reputation as a prominent muralist during the 1940s and is also known for his watercolors, oil paintings, illustrations and woodcarvings....

and Pedro Nel Gómez

Pedro Nel Gómez

Pedro Nel Gómez was a Colombian engineer, architect, painter, and sculptor. He started the Colombian Muralist Movement with Santiago Martinez Delgado, strongly influenced by the Mexican movement. With the fresco mural technique, Pedro Nel Gómez created 2,200 square meters of murals in public...

in Colombia. Some impressive Muralista works can be found also in a number of cities in the USA.

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

remains by far the most known and famous Latin American artist.. Kahlo's work commands the highest selling price of all Latin American paintings.

Literature

What really put Latin American literature on the global map was no doubt the literary boom

Latin American Boom

The Latin American Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world...

of the 1960s and 1970s, distinguished by daring and experimental novels (such as Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

's Rayuela (1963)) that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. The Boom's defining novel was Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...

's Cien años de soledad

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude , by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia...

(1967), which led to the association of Latin American literature with magic realism

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

, though other important writers of the period such as Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...

and Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes Macías is a Mexican writer and one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world. He has influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages.-Biography:Fuentes was born in...

do not fit so easily within this framework. Arguably, the Boom's culmination was Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos, was a noted Paraguayan novelist and short story writer, and one of the most important Latin American writers of the 20th century. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, and he later worked as a journalist, screenwriter and professor...

's monumental Yo, el supremo (1974). In the wake of the Boom, influential precursors such as Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo was a Mexican author and photographer. One of Latin America's most esteemed authors, Rulfo's reputation rests on two slim books, the novel Pedro Páramo , and El Llano en llamas...

, Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified...

, and above all Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

were also rediscovered.

Contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.-Biography:Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical,...

and Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...

to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as Diamela Eltit

Diamela Eltit

Diamela Eltit is a writer and a Spanish professor from Chile. She currently holds a teaching appointment at New York University, where she teaches creative writing....

, Ricardo Piglia

Ricardo Piglia

Ricardo Piglia is one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers, known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration , The Absent City , Burnt Money ; and criticism including Criticism and Fiction , Brief Forms and...

, or Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...

. There has also been considerable attention paid to the genre of testimonio, texts produced in collaboration with subaltern subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú

Rigoberta Menchú

Rigoberta Menchú Tum is an indigenous Guatemalan, of the K'iche' ethnic group. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the plight of Guatemala's indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War , and to promoting indigenous rights in the country...

. Finally, a new breed of chroniclers is represented by the more journalistic Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis Aceves was a Mexican writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. of French decent He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers and was considered to be an opinion leader within the country's progressive sectors. His generation of writers includes Elena...

and Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel is an openly gay Chilean essayist, chronicler, and novelist. He is known for his cutting critique of authoritarianism and for his humorous depiction of Chilean popular culture, from a queer perspective.-List of works:...

.

The region boasts five Nobel Prizewinners

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

: in addition to the Colombian García Márquez (1982), also the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945...

(1945), the Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...

(1967), the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....

(1971), and the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

(1990).

Music

One of the main characteristics of Latin American music is its diversity, from the lively rhythms of Central America and the Caribbean to the more austere sounds of southern South America. Another feature of Latin American music is its original blending of the variety of styles that arrived in The Americas and became influential, from the early Spanish and European Baroque to the different beats of the African rhythms.

Hispano-Caribbean music, such as salsa

Salsa music

Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...

, merengue

Merengue music

Merengue is a type of music and dance from the Dominican Republic. It is popular in the Dominican Republic and all over Latin America. Its name is Spanish, taken from the name of the meringue, a dessert made from whipped egg whites and sugar...

, bachata, etc., are styles of music that have been strongly influenced by African rhythms and melodies.

Arguably, the main contribution to music entered through folklore, where the true soul of the Latin American and Caribbean countries is expressed. Musicians such as Atahualpa Yupanqui

Atahualpa Yupanqui

Atahualpa Yupanqui was an Argentine singer, songwriter, guitarist, and writer. He is considered the most important Argentine folk musician of the 20th century....

, Violeta Parra

Violeta Parra

Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval was a notable Chilean composer, songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist...

, Victor Jara

Víctor Jara

Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theatre director, poet, singer-songwriter, political activist and member of the Communist Party of Chile...

, Mercedes Sosa

Mercedes Sosa

Haydée Mercedes Sosa, known as La Negra, was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout South America and some countries outside the continent. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción. She gave voice to songs written by both...

, Jorge Negrete

Jorge Negrete

Jorge Alberto Negrete Moreno is considered one of the most popular Mexican singers and actors of all time....

, Caetano Veloso

Caetano Veloso

Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...

, and others gave magnificent examples of the heights that this soul can reach.

Latin pop

Latin pop

Latin pop generally refers to pop music that has what may be perceived a Latin American influence...

, including many forms of rock, is popular in Latin America today (see Spanish language rock and roll).

Oceania

Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

is the home of the Pasifika Festival, an annual event which draws artists from throughout the region to celebrate Pacific art and culture.

Australia

The primary basis of Australian culture up until the mid-20th century was Anglo-Celtic

Anglo-Celtic

Anglo-Celtic is a term used to describe people of British and Irish descent. The term today is mainly used outside of Britain and Ireland, particularly in Australia but also in Canada, New Zealand and the United States, where a significant diaspora is located....

, although distinctive Australian features had been evolving from the environment and indigenous culture. Over the past 50 years, Australian culture has been strongly influenced by American popular culture (particularly television and cinema), large-scale immigration from non-English-speaking countries, and Australia's Asian neighbours. The vigour and originality of the arts in Australia — films, opera, music, painting, theatre, dance, and crafts — achieve international recognition.

Australia has a long history of visual arts, starting with the cave

Cave painting

Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to the Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known...

and bark paintings of its indigenous peoples. From the time of European settlement, a common theme in Australian art

Art of Australia

Australian art incorporates art made in Australia or about Australian subjects since prehistoric times. This includes Australian Aboriginal art, Australian Colonial art, Landscape, Atelier, Modernist and Contemporary art. The visual arts have a long history in Australia, with evidence of Aboriginal...

has been the Australian landscape, seen in the works of Arthur Streeton

Arthur Streeton

Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, and his family moved to Richmond in 1874. In 1882, Streeton commenced art studies with G. F. Folingsby at the National Gallery School.Streeton was influenced by French...

, Arthur Boyd

Arthur Boyd

Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, AC, OBE was one of the leading Australian painters of the late 20th Century. A member of the prominent Boyd artistic dynasty in Australia, his relatives included painters, sculptors, architects or other arts professionals. His sister Mary Boyd married John Perceval,...

and Albert Namatjira

Albert Namatjira

Albert Namatjira , born Elea Namatjira, was an Australian artist. He was a Western Arrernte man, an Indigenous Australian of the Western MacDonnell Ranges area...

, among others. The traditions of indigenous Australians are largely transmitted orally and are closely tied to ceremony and the telling of the stories of the Dreamtime. Australian Aboriginal music, dance and art

Australian Aboriginal art

Indigenous Australian art is art made by the Indigenous peoples of Australia and in collaborations between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians . It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpture, ceremonial clothing and sandpainting...

have a palpable influence on contemporary Australian visual and performing arts. Australia has an active tradition of music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

and theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

; many of its performing arts companies receive public funding through the federal government's Australia Council. There is a symphony orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

in each capital city, and a national opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

company, Opera Australia

Opera Australia

Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...

, first made prominent by the renowned diva Dame Joan Sutherland

Joan Sutherland

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....

; Australian music

Music of Australia

The music of Australia is the music produced in the area of, on the subject of, or by the people of modern Australia, including its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Indigenous Australian music is a part of the unique heritage of a 40–60,000 year history which produced the iconic...

includes classical, jazz, and many popular music genres.

Australian literature

Australian literature

Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to...

has also been influenced by the landscape; the works of writers such as Banjo Paterson

Banjo Paterson

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...

and Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...

captured the experience of the Australian bush. The character of colonial Australia, as embodied in early literature, resonates with modern Australia and its perceived emphasis on egalitarianism

Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...

, mateship, and anti-authoritarianism. In 1973, Patrick White

Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...

was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

, the only Australian to have achieved this; he is recognised as one of the great English-language writers of the twentieth century. Australian English

Australian English

Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....

is a major variety of the language; its grammar and spelling are largely based on those of British English, overlaid with a rich vernacular of unique lexical items and phrases, some of which have found their way into standard English.

Papua New Guinea
Contemporary Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

n art is notable for its wood carving

Wood carving

Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object...

, drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

and painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

. Famous visual artists include Mathias Kauage

Mathias Kauage

Mathias Kauage O.B.E., born in Miugu, Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea in 1944, died in May 2003 , was a Papua New Guinean artist. In 1998, Kauage was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts by Queen Elizabeth II. The National Gallery of Australia has described him as...

, Timothy Akis

Timothy Akis

Timothy Akis, born around 1944 in Tsembaga village, Simbai Valley, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, died in 1984, was a Papua New Guinean artist. His art consisted primarily in imaginative pen and ink drawings and batiks inspired by his country's wildlife...

and Larry Santana

Larry Santana

Larry Santana, born in Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea, in 1962, is a Papua New Guinean painter.Larry's original surname was 'Mike' i.e. Larry Mike and he studied under that name at the Goroka School of Art and Design in 1979. One of his painting tutors at that time was New Zealander Roger Smith...

.

Papua New Guinea is also noted for its varied music styles

Music of Papua New Guinea

The music of Papua New Guinea has a long history.-Traditional music:Christian missionaries disapproved of Papuan folk music throughout the colonial period of the country's history. Even after independence, the outside world knew little of the diverse peoples' traditional music genres...

, from sing-sing

Sing-sing

Sing-sing is a gathering of a few tribes or villages in Papua New Guinea. People arrive to show their distinct culture, dance and music. The aim of these gatherings is to peacefully share traditions. Villagers paint and decorate themselves for sing-sings....

to hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

s (Blasius To Una

Blasius To Una

Blasius To Una was a musician from Papua New Guinea. He composed hymns in his language Kuanua. He has been described as "probably the first Papua New Guinean music personality to receive attention from a wide public".-References:...

), to string

Strings (music)

A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...

pop music

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

(Paramana Strangers) and reggae

Reggae

(Anslom Nakikus

Anslom Nakikus

Anslom Nakikus is a Papua New Guinean singer. He has been described by Solomon Islands' leading newspaper Solomon Times as "the popular singing sensation of Papua New Guinea".Reggae is dominant in his music.He has produced two albums to date...

). Sanguma

Sanguma

Sanguma was a Papua New Guinean musical ensemble active from 1977 to 1980. They combined music from the cultural tradition of Papua New Guinea with Western instruments were one of the first Papua New Guinean music groups to perform internationally...

's music combines traditional and Western

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

inspirations, as does George Telek

George Telek

George Mamua Telek, commonly known simply as Telek is a singer from Papua New Guinea.Born in 1959 in Raluana, East New Britain Province, Telek is one of the few Papua New Guinean singers to gain international fame. Telek sang with various bands in Papua New Guinea early in his career - most notably...

's.

Papua New Guinea's first published poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

was Allan Natachee

Allan Natachee

Allan Natachee was a poet from Papua New Guinea. The first Papuan poet in print, he is also sometimes referred to as the 'Papuan Poet Laureate'.-References and external links:*...

; the country's first published novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

list was Sir Vincent Eri

Vincent Eri

Sir Vincent Serei Eri, GCMG was the fifth Governor General of Papua New Guinea and is often cited as being the first Papua New Guinean national to write a novel, The Crocodile in English...

.

Solomon Islands
Contemporary music in the Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

features

Music of the Solomon Islands

The music of the Solomon Islands has received international attention since before the country became independent from the United Kingdom in 1978.-Folk music:...

traditional Melanesian music, as well as rock, reggae

Reggae

and Christian music

Christian music

Christian music is music that has been written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life and faith. Common themes of Christian music include praise, worship, penitence, and lament, and its forms vary widely across the world....

. Sharzy

Sharzy

Sammy Saeni is a musician from Solomon Islands.Sharzy was born on the island of Simbo in the Western Province. His mother is from Simbo and his father from Malaita. His musical career began in 1995 when he joined the 2-4-1 band. He produced his first solo album "Aloha" in 2001, which became an...

is a leading Solomon Islands musician.

The Solomon Islands are less noted for their visual arts, although painter Ake Lianga

Ake Lianga

Ake Lianga is a Solomon Islands screen printer and painter, who has "gained recognition for paintings and murals throughout Oceania".After schooling, Lianga became self-employed as a sign painter and mural artist...

has achieved international renown.

Fiji
Vilsoni Hereniko

Vilsoni Hereniko

Vilsoni Hereniko is a Fiji Islander playwright, film director and academic. He was the writer and director of Fiji's first ever feature film, The Land Has Eyes .-Biography:...

is arguably his country's best-known playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

. He is also a film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

, who wrote and directed Fiji's first ever feature film

Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

, The Land Has Eyes

The Land Has Eyes

The Land Has Eyes is a 2004 Fiji Islander film written and directed by Vilsoni Hereniko. It is the first ever feature film from Fiji.-Plot:...

(Pear ta ma 'on maf).

Polynesia
Polynesia

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

n countries have produced several internationally famous writers, including Samoa

Samoa

Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...

's Albert Wendt

Albert Wendt

Albert Wendt, CNZM is a Samoan poet and writer who also lives in New Zealand. Among his works is Leaves of the Banyan Tree .-Biography:...

and Sia Figiel

Sia Figiel

Sia Figiel is a contemporary Samoan novelist, poet, and painter.Sia Figiel grew up amidst the traditional Samoan singing and poetry which heavily influenced her writing. Her formal schooling was conducted in Samoa and New Zealand where she also began a BA which was completed at Whitworth College...

, and Niue

Niue

Niue , is an island country in the South Pacific Ocean. It is commonly known as the "Rock of Polynesia", and inhabitants of the island call it "the Rock" for short. Niue is northeast of New Zealand in a triangle between Tonga to the southwest, the Samoas to the northwest, and the Cook Islands to...

's John Pule

John Pule

John Puhiatau Pule, born in Liku, Niue in 1962, is a Niuean artist, novelist and poet. He has lived in Auckland, New Zealand since the age of 3. The Queensland Art Gallery describes him as "one of the Pacific's most significant artists".-Literature:...

. Pule is also an artist, whose artwork includes painting, drawing, printmaking

Printmaking

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

, film-making and performance

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

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AfricaAfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

Canada

United States

Asia

Visual art

Literature

Music

Oceania

Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...