Communicating Visual Literacy through Drawing: Illustrations of National Dress, Buddhist Monastic and Ritual Attire in Bhutan.

2016

The artworks and career phases of the Lhasa contemporary artist Gadé illustrate the complex entanglement of religion and the secular in modern Lhasa, while illuminating broader trends in contemporary Tibetan art as a cultural formation of local mediation of modernity’s strong influences. While the past is vital to Gadé, he is driven to “locate traditional Tibetan art in a contemporary context” where it can also be “detached from religion,” raising questions about representations of Tibet and the cultural future. He takes a secular approach to the role of artists in society that, along with his cohorts in the emergent contemporary Tibetan art movement since the 1980s, overturns Tibetan (Buddhist) artistic conventions in favor of personal expression. In Gadé’s paintings and multimedia works from the 1990s to 2012, a collectively-recognized visual language derived from the symbols, styles, compositions, and materials of traditional Buddhist art is juxtaposed with the equally familiar i...

The creativity of the Earth has inspired countless artists across the different continents of the world. The emergence of earthworks in the 1960s has further highlighted the interweaving creative forces of the Earth and the humanity. The imaginative mindscapes of humankind and the sublime landscapes of the Earth are inextricably amalgamated in this unique style of art. This chapter explores eco-aesthetic meanings of the intersections of natural landscape, religious practices, and home-making in a Tibetan farming village nestled on an alluvial fan of a dried tributary of a large river. This chapter treats the built-environment, the natural but humanized surrounding landscapes, and the greater contour of the village as an earthwork in its broadest sense not only as an art form but also as works of geological forces and indigenous civil engineering with a spiritual orientation. Written from a synthesized perspective of cultural anthropology, phenomenology of landscape, and religious studies, this chapter argues that place-specific and culturally-contextualized landscapes have subjectivities of their own. In the context of the Tibetan landscape, this earth-subjectivity is inextricably intertwined and interwoven with collective human subjectivity rested upon human social activities. The materiality of this intersubjective relation between the landscape and humans is what the author calls an “inter-dwelling process,” which is the centerpiece of this chapter.

A Mandala of 21st Century Perspectives: Proceedings of the International Conference on Tradition and Innovation in Vajrayana Buddhism, 2017

For initiated viewers, the murals, thangkas and sculptures visible in Vajrayana Buddhist temples and shrines illustrate key rituals, deities, and lineage masters that provide important supports to practice. Yet often these objects carry additional, deeper meanings that can only be understood when we take into account the artists and patrons who contributed to their creation. Drawing on new research, this paper focuses on particular artists who created works for display and use in Bhutanese ritual environments, with special attention paid to objects created in the early post-Zhabdrung era. The study takes as its point of departure one of the foremost artists in Bhutanese history: Tsang Khenchen Palden Gyatso (gtsang mkhan chen dpal ldan rgya mtsho; 1610-1684), who arrived in Bhutan in the second half of the 17th century. Tsang Khenchen—and the Bhutanese students he trained—constitute a major foundation of what can be termed ‘Bhutanese art’ on a national scale, and this paper analyses the impacts of Tsang Khenchen and his atelier in highlighting important Vajrayana Buddhist rituals, practices, and lineage masters through their artistic output. Due to the comparative political and social stability of Bhutan over the centuries, works attributable to Tsang Khenchen and other important artists survive intact to the present. These works constitute the core of this paper, which hopes to offer evidence of the ways Bhutanese art evolved to fit a new nation in 17th century Bhutan, and how resulting works employed Vajrayana Buddhist imagery to reflect a distinctly ‘Bhutanese’ identity and artistic style. This paper is one facet of a larger, longer term research project undertaken in collaboration with the National Library and Archives of Bhutan that seeks to identify, examine and analyze those individual artists whose creations provide key touchstones to Bhutanese art history. **A version of this paper appeared in Orientations 48/3 (May/June 2017)

ASIAN HIGHLANDS PERSPECTIVES, 2023

'Jam dbyangs skyabs. 2023. Tibetan Artifacts: Prayer Wheels, Worn Religious Items, Tibetan Tents, and Personal Ornaments in 2022. Asian Highlands Perspectives 63:98-149. Personal experiences and histories of local older Tibetan religious practitioners illustrate the religious and cultural practices of Stag lung Mtha' ba, Khang sar Township, Gcig sgril (Jiuzhi) County, Mgo log (Goulou) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Mtsho sngon (Qinghai) Province, PR China. Highlighting the significant roles that religious items, personal ornaments, Tibetan tents, and the memories of their use play in local lives, the article provides insights into the importance of the community's religion and traditions. Interviews with local elders about their life experiences, religious items, and personal ornaments enrich our understanding of how symbols of faith connect individuals to their cultural heritage and history, offering a deeper appreciation of the significance of these items, including their symbolism and function. By showcasing the importance of personal experiences and histories in understanding the significance of religious practices and objects in a specific Tibetan community, this paper contributes to the literature on Tibetan religion and culture, offering a unique perspective on the diverse and rich traditions locally maintained and practiced and highlighting the importance of cultural heritage and history in shaping local identity and values.

2017

The preference for representing Tibet and its material culture through wholly religious narratives has increasingly been recognised as an ideological prison (Lopez Jr 1999). Museums in the UK rather than continuing to privilege the religious lives of objects in their care are instead mounting efforts to understand the latent historical, colonial and political context and ‘the everyday’ in Tibet collections through community engagement projects (see Crowley 2015) and archival research (see Harris 2012, Livne 2010, 2013 and Martin 2010, 2012). Mining the archives reveals that Tibetan objects displayed in religious contexts were not exclusively understood as religious things by their Tibetan Buddhist owners. Buddhist objects were simultaneously put to work as religious, political and diplomatic objects, or as sites of intellectual and artistic enquiry (see Martin 2015, forthcoming 2017). This type of work has resulted in alternate readings of Tibetan objects, which are now available via on-line interpretation and documentation, although admittedly these approaches have yet to materialise in physical display spaces. While the primary concern of the 2016 Museum Ethnographers Group conference ‘Faith and Community: Interpreting Beliefs in the Modern Museum’ was framed by the intricacies and challenges of displaying and negotiating the sacred in museum spaces as laid out by Crispin Paine (2013), in this paper I want to offer a counterpoint to these discussions. Using curatorial processes and particularly those associated with contemporary collecting I ask if curators of Tibetan objects can locate them in a less rigidly defined space. I also want to know if a move towards a secular approach can trouble the current stereotypes and tropes that persist in western representations of Tibetanness; one that consistently envelops Tibetans in robes of religiosity and timelessness.

Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2016

This book was originally produced in in print form 2005 and 2011 in collaboration with the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, to highlight the work of contemporary Tibetan artists and craftspeople and to show the continuity of their traditions. This is a freely-distributable pdf version.

2014

Tibetan art often conjures images of multi-limbed deities and ritual objects; however, several artists within Tibet’s transnational diaspora have adopted modern methods of art production. This essay, supported by an interview with the artist in June of 2014, presents an in depth exploration of the life and work of Kesang Lamdark, a contemporary Tibetan artist, who produces Neo-Tantric art. His artworks rely on the relationship between materiality and semiotics to convey social criticism and decontextualize esoteric Buddhist philosophy. By transforming commonplace substances into recognizable Buddhist symbols, Lamdark’s art aims to achieve material apotheosis. The Buddhist concept of Śūnyatā or emptiness--the understanding that all phenomena exists conventionally while ultimately lacking an inherent essence--is both the artist’s subject and construction material. Influenced by the opposing forces of tradition and modernity, Lamdark’s highly philosophical art contextualizes ancient soteriological concepts within modern time.

Marg Publication, edited by Deepak Shimkhada

Oxford Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Online), ed. by Richard Payne, Oxford: OUP, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.584 The overwhelming focus on textual or dharma studies in Buddhism, to the relative neglect of artistic production, has led to a bias in understanding the close and intricate relationships between Buddhist art (usually comprising sculptures, mural paintings, architectural facades and ornamental elements, illuminated paintings, cloth banners, and drawings in manuscripts), rituals, and the written word. The constant dialogue between material, visual, and ritual cultures should be approached in tandem. Visual culture is a significant part of Buddhism and must be treated as part of the same social, historical, and geographical contexts as texts and practices. Buddhist visual culture, including art media, graphic aids, and physical objects or monuments associated with Buddhist practices, does not merely serve to illustrate sacred texts, legends, and doctrines. In addition, the textual tradition does not always have to explain or justify the presence-or absence-of a material object such as a Buddha icon or a Buddhist painting. While visual culture studies have become increasingly important in various academic fields over the years, a critical and complete overview of the precise relationship between art, ritual, and text in the study of south and southeast Asian Buddhism has yet to be written.

2014

Journal of Korean Studies 27-2, 2022

This article examines woodblock prints of the Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī of the Precious Casket Seal of the Concealed Complete-Body Relics of the Essence of All Tathāgatas, a short text that came to serve as a backbone for the textual relic cult and, starting in the early Koryŏ, became an important part of consecratory deposits of Buddhist icons. This article focuses on how material embodiments of dhāraṇīs were enshrined in the Korean context and how such enshrinement defined their function and meaning. Through an analysis of the Dhāraṇī of the Precious Casket Seal in diverse forms, visual designs, and ritual contexts from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the article demonstrates that the materiality of this important dhāraṇī was key to its performativity as a sacred object that could consecrate otherwise manmade architectural or iconic entities. By so doing, this study reveals key aspects of the Buddhist visual culture that have long remained obscure, while contributing to the growing scholarship on textual materiality in premodern Korea.

Commerce and Communities: Social Status and the Exchange of Goods in Tibetan Societies, 2018

Telling history through objects and images has been an increasingly important tool in both academic and popular writing as exemplified by publications like Eyewitnessing by Peter Burke (2001) and A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (2011). This paper will focus on aspects of trading and transport activities in mid-19th century Tibet that rely on visual images. It therefore supports the trend of using images as historical sources in the interdisciplinary field of visual culture studies. Based on the drawings of the British Library’s Wise Collection the following analysis will show what kind of general and specific information on trading activities can be deducted from a visual source. The paper will tackle a number of pointed research questions such as how were trading routes and transport activities represented through visual culture, particularly through illustrated maps? What kind of knowledge related to trade was circulated on these maps, and why was particular information considered important?