Tibet Revealed: Art from the Roof of the World is iAOHiN Gallery’s first Himalayan themed show, featuring traditional thangka from the Rebkong region, as well as artworks by contemporary Tibetan artists now living in The Netherlands, New York and Australia.
Founded in 2011 as the first private art gallery in Macau, this is the first time iAOHin Gallery has put traditional art alongside contemporary works in the one exhibition.
“Thangka” comes from the pronunciation of two Tibetan words: “Thang” refers to the vast and boundless space, while “Ka” means to fill in the blanks. Combined together, they refer to the scroll paintings of traditional Tibetan forms of religious art.
Most thangkas feature Buddha, Budhisattva or Dharmapala, passing information to the viewer through their faces, Buddhist ritual instruments and even gestures. Each different device depicted in the thangka has a specific meaning. For instance, Budhisattva represents mercy, the image of a heart represents desire, and scriptures stand for wisdom and knowledge. All the drawings must strictly follow rules regarding the size and proportion of different elements; even the flowers and leaves that decorate the picture frames.
These strict rules makes each thangka a way of passing on the heritage of the faith, and therefore endows them with religious appeal as well as aesthetics beyond time and space.
Liben Tashi, one of the thangka painters from Rebkong who has studied the art form since he was very young, explains that to paint thangka requires patience and confidence, and at least seven to eight hours of drawing per day. The painters also need to make their own frames and canvasses before they begin. Starting from dots, one picture requires hundreds of repeated brush strokes to make the lines grow into the striking images.
The use of unique pigments not only makes thangkas valuable, but also adds to their artistic charm. Liben Tashi notes that all the painting pigments come from the earth: some are valuable minerals like gold, agate, kallaite, malachite; some are precious plants like saffron; and some are very special soils.
These pigments also need specialized preparation by hand, and though it takes a long time, once drawn on the canvas, the colours will remain vivid for years.
This is the first time Liben Tashi and his colleagues have come to Macau.
“Minority cultures are dying because of the lack of social attention, so this is a good opportunity to show our culture to other people. The more people know, the better for us, and it also helps with the protection of the culture,” he says.
Coincidentally, this is also the first time for the contemporary Tibetan diaspora artist Tashi Norbu, another artist in this exhibition, to come to Macau.
Tashi Norbu is an independent contemporary artist with Belgian citizenship who now lives and works in The Netherlands. He studied to become a traditional Tibetan thangka painter at the offices of the Dalai Lama in India, and later completed his art studies in the west and has developed into an all-round and versatile contemporary artist. Though his art still shows the fundamentals of his traditional background, it also combines influences from western art forms and ideas and modern iconic images.
Norbu’s style is perfectly revealed in one of his works on display, Burning Away Ignorance: Leaving Behind Wisdom Mind. In this work, the artist uses traditional ways to draw the flames of the fire, and to create faces out of it, while also adding secular elements such as newspaper clippings, press photos, and cartoon characters.
“It’s very much Buddhist culture based on Buddhist philosophy,” Norbu explains, “Buddhism is very realistic, but some people treat it too much like a religion, especially the Tibetans. They think they’ll solve their problems. And I was trying to burn that idea. I’m not doing what they wish to do. With the right wisdom, you can burn the dogma out of the Buddha, then you will become yourself as a Buddha.”
When asked how he positions himself between the traditional and contemporary art worlds, Norbu answers: “I studied Tibetan thangka paintings and now I’m trying to make a fusion of the two cultures. I don’t want to position myself as this or that. When talking about art – contemporary art, music, poems, literature, traditional art – they are all the same. Art is to express – and I choose contemporary art – only when it is purely done from the heart.”
The Tibet Revealed exhibition also features artwork from two other Tibetan artists, Rabkar Wangchuk and Karma Phuntsok. Like Norbu, they were also trained as thangka painters, and now live overseas and make artistic creations in their own styles, though their works always reveal the Tibetan souls rooted in their hearts.
Florence Lam, one of the partners of iAOHiN Gallery notes that despite the fact that these Tibetan artists are from different areas with different backgrounds, and even the Tibetan language they use is not exactly the same, they still share a common character that they all are “committed to the faith.” And the universal values included in their artworks – peace, love, kindness – can allow people to easily relate to their messages regardless of whether they are Buddhist or not.
And this is exactly what the gallery wants to present ﹣ the views of the Tibetan experience from the perspective of Tibetans themselves.
On display until June 22.
Macau Rua Da Tecena No. 39A
