Tibetan artists speak for themselves|While the words “oppressed country” and “chic” don’t typically belong in the same sentence, it seems safe to say that the Tibetan cause remains as fashionable as any in the world.
After all, how many other international issues have been worthy of a Richard Gere outburst at the Academy Awards that remains notorious more than a decade after it happened?
Instead of Westerners raising their voices in protest, however sincere, an exhibition running through Oct. 20 at the CU Art Museum offers a refreshing alternative: It gives Tibetans an opportunity to speak for themselves.
Evocatively titled “Waves on the Turquoise Lake: Contemporary Expressions of Tibetan Art,” it brings together works by 17 artists who live in exile or reside in what is known euphemistically in China as the “Tibetan Autonomous Region.”
The presentation, curated by Lisa Tamiris Becker, director of the CU Art Museum, and Tamar Victoria Scoggin, curator of the Mechak Center for Contemporary Tibetan Art in Boulder, is billed as the first major museum exhibition to bring together works by artists working in and outside Tibet.
Because of the country’s rich cultural history, any mention of Tibetan art typically conjures a vision of centuries-old objects. While it is evident upon reflection that artists must still be at work there, the notion of Tibetan contemporary art seems a surprising and strange notion.
Raising that fog of obscurity and bringing this little-known work more into the mainstream is precisely the point of this important exhibition, which was accompanied Sept. 30 by a symposium that brought together key artists and scholars from around the world.
Some of the selections seem stale, such as “Dharma Song” (2005) by Sodhon of Dharamsala, India, a figurative painting in a tired, semi-abstract style. But most exude a freshness that derives from fascinating reinterpretations of Tibetan art history and unexpected fusions with other styles.
Many of these artists explore the multiplicity of changes that have overtaken Tibet, from political upheavals dating to the emergence of Mao Tse-Tung in 1949 to the contradictory conveniences and environmental challenges arising from encroaching modernity.
No artist more creatively addresses these issues than Gade, who resides in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Painting on long, narrow sheets of handmade paper echoing the shape of Tibetan scripture books, he rethinks the traditional Tibetan landscape in “New Tibet” (2006).
Displaying extraordinary technical mastery and maintaining a kind of folk aesthetic, Gade fancifully mixes fiction and reality, as he cohesively interweaves a futuristic view of Lhasa, including skyscrapers, a bullet train and even a space port, with glimpses of its past and present.
In a second piece, “Nirvana” (2006), created in the same format, he channels Andy Warhol as he comments, among other things, on the co-opting of Buddha by popular culture. Gade places Mao in a reclining Buddhist pose in the middle of a gridwork of repeated images of a meditating Mickey Mouse.
In his playful “Buddha@hotmail-1″ (2006), Gonkar Gyatso of London is even more direct in his look at the place of Buddha in international popular culture. He creates a kind collaged Buddhist silhouette, using stickers depicting everything from Marge Simpson to Hello Kitty.
The Tibetan diaspora has inevitably led to cultural intersections, none more intriguing and beautiful than the unlikely fusion of Tibetan thangka painting and central desert aboriginal painting by Karma Phuntsok of Kyogle, Australia.
This merger can best be seen in “Vajra” (no date), a spectacular pattern painting in which Phuntsok has appropriated the dotting that is so much a part of aboriginal art. He overlays colorful evocations of the Tibetan vajra symbol onto a field of carefully arrayed gold dots.
Tibet’s extraordinary artistic past will always loom large, but the country’s contemporary artists are making a solid claim on the present as well.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Waves on the Turquoise Lake: Contemporary Expressions of Tibetan Art”
ART EXHIBIT|CU Art Museum, Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building, University of Colorado at Boulder|Free|10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays; through Oct. 20; 303-492-8300 or colorado.edu/cuartmuseum
