Burro treasure: Handicrafts are on display at The Man and the Magic of Cacao exhibition, which presents the diversity of Venezuela's culture. — VNS Photo Truong Vi

HA NOI — Local culture, agriculture and handicrafts of Venezuela were presented to Vietnamese people through a photo exhibition that opened yesterday in Ha Noi.

Entitled The Man and the Magic of Cacao, the exhibition displays 20 photographic work of artist Laila Chemekh Saab who spent three years researching the Barlovento people's daily lives in a cacao plantation near Caracas.

The Barlovento usually have big families whose main activity is the harvesting of cocoa. Saab, in his photography, captures this cultural identity of African descent.

From formal strategy of digital photography, he selects the images (portraits, landscapes and traditional objects) and edits them to produce a sensory experience of the rituals that accompany cacao.

The exhibition also displays a diverse culture through handcrafted objects as individual expressions of a tradition that has been transmitted from generation to generation.

Visitors will learn Venezuelan culture through objects such as the black baskets closely linked to the spiritual life of the Yekuanas group; the traditional bag Tzu Tzu, an integral part of the Wayuu people's dresses that girls learn how to knit as teenagers; wooden toys, inseparable companions of children; sacred figures and the Devils of Yares' masks representing the Venezuelan faith in the Catholic religion; the hammock bed to rest after a long laborious day and drums, an expression of the Venezuelan's fellowship with the African continent.

These selections of handicrafts are part of being Venezuelan, a magical combination of three cultures: Indian, African and European.

The exhibition is organised by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Viet Nam in the commemoration of 201 years of independence. It will run until Saturday at the Culture and Arts Exhibition Centre, 2 Hoa Lu Street, Ha Noi. — VNS