Happy International Cat Day to our feline friends and their humans!

A curated collection of art from museums around the world, depicting people from 5 continents in the company of cats. 

Happy International Cat Day! For the Cat Lovers: Non-Eurocentric Cat Art

Dear cat art aficionados, wishing you a Happy International Cat Day on 8/8!

Tired of paging through the some arts app's mostly Eurocentric highlights looking for work created by artists from the global majority?

Good news. I've put together the following collection in Google Arts and Culture for your enjoyment :-)

Cat art from non-European cultures -  52 images of cats created by non-European artists in ancient and modern cultures

Friendship and sisterhood: supernatural folktales of women helping each other

Women who make other women's lives miserable are disproportionately represented in folktales from around the world. Wicked stepmothers and cruel sisters drive the plots of countless fairy tales. Sometimes, the negative woman-woman relationships in the story are offset slightly by the presence of a wise crone or fairy woman who aids the heroine. But stories of mutually beneficial relationships between women who are peers are harder to find.

With that in mind, here are a few stories that meet the following conditions:

1. A woman protagonist but NO woman antagonist
2. Two or more female characters who help each other or work collaboratively (the typical fairy godmother intervention would not count because the giving is largely one-sided)

Rock-cut architecture in Africa and Asia

Rock-hewn monuments from North African, East African, West Asian and South Asian civilizations:

Abu Simbel Temple (photo by Than217)

Bet Medhane Alem church (photo by Julien_Demade)

Mada'in Saleh" (photo by SammySix)

Cave 21 at Ellora (photo by Nandanupadhyay)

Detail of Naqsh-e Rustam (photo by Pastaitaken)

Click on thumbnails to view images on wikipedia.

Fantasy and mythology art inspired by the Middle East

Click image below to view Art from animation, book illustrations and graphic novels, produced by artists from diverse locales, including Turkey, Iran, Europe and North America:

Henna Art from Around the World

Been listening to Rango, and their rendition of Henna Night is stuck in my head. :-) Hence the inspiration for this post:

henna-decorated foot in Morocco

henna-painted hands in India

Click thumbnails to view larger images on source pages.

Some African and Asian cultures that decorate brides (and, in some cases, grooms) with henna:

Skull modification around the world

Arawe skull lengthening in Papua New Guinea 

Mangbetu skull elongation in DRC

The scifi illustration Through the Gate was inspired by elegant Mangbetu head shapes and hair-styles.

A (non-exhaustive) list of cultures that practiced head shaping for aesthetic or social reasons: