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Seekers, 2012
Seekers series is titled after a name given to specially trained Tibetan scholars who search modern day Tibet for cultural artefacts, which were hidden for protection after Chinese invasion in 1959, and are still unaccounted for. Seekers embark on their mission driven to find treasures of the past, with landscape and people changed often beyond recognition. Old maps, texts, noted landmarks, oral accounts and coded clues offer a starting point for their search but need to be combined with new ways of self-orientation that take into account changes that occurred.
The photographs in the series adopt colours of prayer flags, drawing on symbolism of cosmic elements at the centre of Buddhist philosophy, to consider displacement, landlessness, political status, and power of Tibetans born and living outside of Tibet who strive to assert their new identity in exile.
The Mask For Both Worlds, (work in progress) 2012
The Mask For Both Words represents an imaginary deity, a new descendent of gods, coming to protect those that died as well as the living.Inspired by traditional Tibetan Cham masks, it draws on formal attributes of two deities: Thur Dhag, protector of the dead represented as a human skull, and Yamantaka, a blue, flame adorned ox, protector of the living, the “Slayer of Death”, who centers on transformation of anger into a pathway to spiritual progress.
Traditional painted motifs are transgressed: yellow and blue horns refer to the stateless status of exiled Tibetans who in India are issued a yellow book and a blue one as identity papers but are not entitled to passports. Numbers 56-62, painted on the back of the mask, refer to 7 people who self-immolated to protest against Chinese occupation of Tibet during artist’s residency in Dharamshala between 20th Oct and 1st Nov 20012, there is a number 6,000 000 – a total population of Tibetans, and 150 000 – a current number of those in exile. The mask has a female eye – a symbol of all encompassing knowledge, and her eye sockets contain two pulsating hearts.
The mask was created in collaboration with Lobsang Dhoyou, born in Kham province of Tibet, an ex-monk, in exile and living in Dharamshala, India since 1992, where he became a master mask maker after studying for 10 years under the guidance of Venerable Kalsang Dorjee. He was a chief sculptor of the Tibetan Martyrs Memorial in McLeod Ganj.
Oracle: See, Touch, Ask Questions, 2012
Oracle is a totemic sculptural installation with three words attached to its title, “See, Touch, Ask Questions,” principle instructions followed in Tibetan medicine. The work reflects on conversations in Dharamshala about issues that will need to be faced when Tibet is free and how to heal the wounds suffered by people and nature. With pressing and present issues to deal with, visions of the future can seem illusive, like a circle of briefly reflected, pulsating lines cast by shards of mirrors hang from branches of a dead tree when the sun breaks through to them. Freedom takes on a monumental but an obscure form here. It is hard to grasp it in one glance, but each of the elements of the installation is linked to others and each symbolises a different aspect of a foreseeable healing process whilst pointing to a collective and individual responsibility of part taking in the process.