“Identity is a very individual thing. All people have their own identities, what they have experienced, seen and so on. Purity culture is like forcing people to come into one category, like this is Tibetan, this is Indian. They are forcing people to be in a homogenous group and culture, but it is not.”
“If you are creating something new, a sign that you are doing something is when people criticize you, because you are provoking something. It clashes with their long-held ideas and questions them.”–Tenzin Gyurmey (February 2023)
Today, I was delighted to read that the Tibetan artist, Tenzin Gyurmey (born and raised in India), has just been awarded by the New York Rubin Museum of Art, their new Rubin Himalayan Art Prize—an unrestricted $30,000 cash grant that is now the largest source of direct financial support available to contemporary Himalayan artists. A jury of Rubin staff and other experts evaluated the 32 contemporary artists in their current show, “Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now,” to select the inaugural winner.
As you can read in this exclusive lengthy interview with Gyurmey and art review, Red-Faced Behind the Two Mountains (February 2023), I first saw Tenzin Gyurmey’s unique and remarkable artworks, and met him personally, at an exhibit of his work while living in Dharamsala, India.
At the time, he seemed such a massive, yet under-rated and still relatively unknown talent. His provocative and playful paintings, including one my favourite pieces, A Crime With Mother, in handcuffs with his mother for buying the forbidden ‘sacred cow’ meat in India, a portrayal of his ‘mixed feelings’ of buying and eating slaughtered animals within an Indian Hindu and Buddhist culture. Also the painting Blessed, which includes an image of the 14th Dalai Lama (a meat-eater) holding up slabs of steak as ‘horns’, were challenging, visceral and unique. Often painted on the gauze ‘food sack’ cloth sent to the Tibetan exile communities by the US government. As he states on his website: “This material bears testament to the way the Tibetan diaspora has planted themselves in a new culture, and undergone changes in their own culture. Through these works, I examine and celebrate the space we have created for ourselves as Tibetans in India.”
Tricycle Buddhist Magazine, then requested I write two further art reviews about Gyurmey’s work, one for their online review here and a later one called Memories in Exile for the magazine.
Gyurmey then informed me, shortly after the Tricycle publication, that Rubin Museum had contacted him to exhibit some of his work in Fall 2023. So, this latest news of their art prize is well-deserved and no doubt much-needed to support his work and creativity.
As creative people know, the life of an original, provocative thinker, writer, musician, painter, artist is often a lonely one, with years of zero recognition or applause. That is not why genuine creators create though, they do it regardless of money or fame, they do it for the love of it. As I wrote about in my interview and review of the photographer, Nicholas Vreeland, Seeing And Revering Nature With Love: Trees Of Dharamsala, the word amateur means the ‘one who loves’. That is how I see Gyurmey and other original and talented creators/artists who against all the odds, from materially poor backgrounds, without powerful families, wealth or names or support, the ‘misfits’ who walked that lonely ‘boulevard of broken dreams’, after years of passionate love and effort for their art and craft, manage to not only create a unique and stunning legacy of work, but to gain some deserved recognition of that too. Some creators only gain recognition post-humously, like the famed German philosopher Schopenhauer, or Tibetan intellectual and revolutionary thinker, Gedun Chophel. In Gyurmey’s case his talent has been recognised in this life, for which I heartily congratulate him.
Music? D Town by G Tashi ft. K Kush, Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day (one of Gyurmey’s favourite tracks) and Can You Hear Me? by GTashi.
Written by Adele Tomlin, 21st September 2024.
Re-published Introduction from Red-Faced Behind the Two Mountains: An Exclusive Interview and Art Review with Tibetan artist Tenzin Gyurmey (February 2023)
“Whoever wants to engage people’s interest must provoke them.” –Salvador Dali
“Creativity takes courage.” –Henri Matisse
“For me, art has one language and it is not relevant to divide the artistic legacy and production into Western or non-Western.” –Subodh Gupta
“If you are creating something new, a sign that you are doing something is when people criticize you, because you are provoking something. It clashes with their long-held ideas and questions them.”–Tenzin Gyurmey
INTRODUCTION/REVIEW
On the first day of Losar Tibetan New Year (21st February 2023), I had the good fortune to meet and interview one of the most unique, inventive and exciting contemporary Tibetan artists, Tenzin Gyurmey at The Other Space Gallery, Mcleod Ganj, India. The Other Space (as I have written about before here in relation to Nicolas Vreelands’ exhibition) which is a few minutes’ walk from the residence of the 14th Dalai Lama, was set up to be a café that hosts art exhibits. Gyurmey’s current solo exhibition there called Behind the Two Mountains immediately caught my eye with its colourful symbolic ‘prints’ of surrealist and Tibetan imagery. Below this introduction and review is the full transcript of our two-hour interview, (and my first meeting with him) together with images of the artworks and descriptions kindly given by Gyurmey on request.
Gyurmey’s story follows the trajectory of a naturally talented, yet materially ‘poor’ artist who managed to create unique art despite the odds. When I asked him about his life, he first explained his humble beginnings as the son of a tulku Tibetan thangka artist (who was very connected to the 16th Karmapa), who had no materials or books to study art when he was at school, and other than his father and art teacher (who left for a ‘better’ school) there were not many external cultural or artistic influences, support and resources. Due to such social pressures to do well at school, he planned to study genetic engineering in Delhi, but karma intervened and he was unable to take up the place. Then, encouraged by his sister, he returned to his love of art by studying at the best art college in Delhi. Through that study, and meetings with another Tibetan contemporary artist, Tsering Sherpa, he held his first art exhibit in Kathmandu, Nepal, which led to him selling one of his works for the first time.
Gyurmey’s work is not only extraordinary in terms of its unique imagery, materials, visual and visceral impact but also its unique symbolism in terms of its references to both Indian and Tibetan exile culture, taboos, forbidden activities, proverbs and spiritual iconography. For example, Gyurmey’s story of not being able to afford the canvases and using as a substitute the woven taupe material of the sacks delivered to the refugee community by the USA, is touching and symbolic of his journey as a Tibetan exile, but also as an artist and human being. Even when his art was getting some notice, he was unable to travel to England for a solo art exhibition due to possibly not having enough money in his bank account, or his Tibetan refugee passbook.
Gyurmey’s work also ‘secretly’ weaves Tibetan and Indian symbols and proverbs into it, such as the monkey-ass red faces symbolising Tibetan ‘shame’ and ‘shyness’ when doing ‘naughty’ forbidden things behind the two mountains – a place where people secretly went to hang out, smoke, meet their foreign girlfriends and so on. There are also risque and controversial paintings, such as Blessed (2022) featuring the face of the 14th Dalai Lama, meat and his tulku father in the pose of famous yogi, Milarepa, and Crime With Mother (2021) that deals with the inner conflict the child Gyurmey felt at her buying and eating forbidden buffalo meat in India. For me, the latter artwork is one of the strongest, and most profound and brave paintings in Gyurmey’s works. Dealing with honesty, killing animals, ‘sacred cows’, religious beliefs and inner turmoil/conscience and transgressing those beliefs.
I asked Gyurmey what he thought about the idea of a culturally and ethnically pure Tibetan-ness and he told me he was not a purist in that sense, but like all great artists someone who sees (an appreciates) the natural richness, beauty, vitality and aesthetic qualities of all the inter-cultural influences that organically and naturally make us who we are as unique individuals, but also as human beings, especially in these cross-cultural and eclectic times of internet and mass social media.
In these ways, Gyurmey also challenges, inspires and motivates Tibetans of all ages and social backgrounds (and those who know and support them) to re-think and re-invent social and culturally conservative, homogenous ideas of being ‘blessed’, racial purity, patriarchal and religious culture, combined with the stifling Orientalist, romantic notions of their Euro-Anglo-American ‘friends’, which also keep them in that ‘straitjacket’ of what is a ‘good’ Tibetan in exile growing up in a Buddhist culture. His art visually expresses a voice and mind that speaks also to individual freedom of expression, speech and identity rather than only political freedom. Demonstrating that such creativity is alive and well in Tibetan exile art. For example, where are the Bhutanese artists dealing with such ‘challenging’ topics? Like the Indian contemporary artists who inspire him, Gyurmey clearly deserves greater recognition and international art exhibitions in places like London and New York.
When we met, Gyurmey wore a sweater that said ‘I like boring things’, which he told me was an Andy Warhol quote (Warhol’s pop art became so influential in the 20th Century and whose prophecy that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes appears to have come true with Tiktok and Instagram reels). However, Gyurmey’s work is anything but boring and brings colour and imagination to the seemingly mundane life growing up as a naughty Tibetan boy in exile, dealing with eating forbidden meat, mixing so-called ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ things, inter-racial/ethnic relationships and Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana iconography with stunning visuals, colours, passion and energy, creating something uniquely Tibetan but also globally relevant in a way that crosses all cultural and spiritual boundaries. Hence, the reason why the Matisse quote about courage and creativity seems more apt. On the other hand, it also reminded me of the famous Tibetan Buddhist master (and artist-poet) Chogyam Trungpa who spoke of accepting and appreciating ‘cool boredom’ as an essential part of the journey to full awakening.
As Gyurmey explained, buffalo meat was banned in the state Himachal Pradesh because of the ‘sacred cow’ Hindu ideology, and many Buddhists (including Tibetans) regard meat-eating as sacrilegious, impure and cruel (with good reasons). The term ‘sacred cow’ is also used metaphorically in English to refer to an idea, custom, or institution held to be above criticism due to social or religious pressure and norms. So, in more ways than one, Gyurmey tells and tackles, in a highly creative, direct and indirect, courageous and humorous way, the stories, influence and power of the ‘sacred cows’ in his own culture and community.
RED-FACED ‘BEHIND THE TWO MOUNTAINS’: VISCERAL PAINTINGS ON WOVEN ‘FOREIGN AID SACKS’ OF MONKEY-ASS FACES, SKULLS, ‘SACRED COWS’, BLOODY MEAT AND ‘PURITY’: Tibetan contemporary artist, Tenzin Gyurmey’s solo exhibition in Dharamsala, an exclusive interview and review