"The Embarrasing State of Modern Tibetan Art" By Kaka21

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by a Tibetan artist who calls himself Kaka21. The blogpost was uploaded onto his blog on November 13, 2010. Born in 1971 in Lhasa, Kaka21 had his work exhibited in last year's major modern Tibetan art exhibition in Beijing called "Scorching Sun of Tibet", see some photos of his works here on Woeser's blog.

Whilst modern Tibetan art may be becoming more visible on the international market, it is still fairly rare to find critical commentaries on modern Tibetan art written by Tibetans. Last year's commentary piece on "Scorching Sun of Tibet" by Woeser was a very popular post on High Peaks Pure Earth and below, Kaka21 offers a rather different perspective on modern Tibetan art. For readers interested in seeing more art, visit the Sweet Tea House website or Mechak Center for Contemporary Tibetan Art.



A few years ago, in a coffee shop in Lhasa I accidentally bumped into two members of the Tibetan artistic community. We instantly recognised each other, having encountered one another before in the past and so began to discuss the topic of art. I don’t know why, but I have always loved asking questions, testing my own ability to examine and understand things from a different artistic perspective. Perhaps it was because I asked too many questions, but soon enough the two Tibetan artists seemed to grow distant, simply agreeing with everything that I asked with a “Yes, yes... of course!” After a while, we all eventually drifted into silence, and the discussion stopped.

“We don’t need to spend ages thinking about how to paint a painting or finish a piece of art. All you need to do is to pick up a pencil and draw, that is modern art.” This is what they ultimately summarised as their creative motivation. I think that maybe “unconscious art” should be a sub-category of Tibetan modern art, or to put it in another way, works of art which are “intellectually simplistic”. This kind of art has only value in terms of its form, as there has been no thinking behind it. When looking at a particular style of art, it is vital to take into consideration the culture, environment and society that shape it because ultimately, what is art but a reflection of this? Especially when considering modern Tibetan art, I think it is something that we modern artists need to carefully investigate and analyse. On countless occasions, when discussing ideas with other artists, even though we all respect one another immensely, we always end up talking about things in such a cynical, joking way.

I believe that modern artists have a different set of values when judging the past and present, the modern and the traditional. The question is how can we determine modern values, when we don’t even understand traditional values? Is there even a correct system of evaluation with which to improve your creativity? In terms of artistic creativity, to blindly go against something has no merit or future, and does not allow room for progression. For modern Tibetan art, religion is a way for us to express the importance of our unique heritage and background. A lot of work nowadays is based upon the modern interpretation of religion. However, in these works, the presence of a religious element always appears to be distant and hidden to the audience, as if mourning the loss of a beautiful but fading scenery, helpless to stop it. At the same time, in many of these works modernity and its markings are always portrayed as being in opposition to this beautiful scenery, instrumental in bringing about its demise. Are we condemning modern society for its advances, or ashamed of our own incompetence? Maybe it is both. If people take religion to be the most defining part of their lives, then  its power and greatness is as strong nowadays as it has ever been, and we should not take such a lamenting, defeatist approach towards it. Religion’s real demise will only happen if it is fading within the hearts of the people. I remember an article in a magazine introducing modern Tibetan art, that once said “In our works, the Buddha will always be the symbol for life’s emotions.” From what I understand of religion, especially Buddhism in particular, the Buddha transcended our kind of human suffering, so this kind of artistic symbolism is not really applicable to the situation. Suffering is something which affects everyone’s lives, is it not possible for us to just face the reality of the situation and address it head on?

It is impossible to try and remove religion from Tibetan life and culture, yet presently, the modern Tibetan society that artists are trying to portray is also changing day by day. Tibetan culture is evolving, and the changing attitudes towards religion have become a main point of contention for many artists. Because the majority of modern Tibetan artists take religion as their main inspiration, the current crisis in belief within society has meant that consequently, the state of the art scene is also becoming rather problematic. Modern artworks are beginning to take on a rather embarrassing creative direction. Religious belief should not be just concerned with celebrating the beautiful and sublime; it is also about being ignorant and ignorance, fear, the strange and the uncanny. For such an ancient civilisation such as Tibet, we already bear so many countless examples of beautiful treasures and art, created and inspired by the unwavering beliefs of those before us. So much art nowadays has just become fickle, impatient and unfocused. We cannot deny or try to hide the fact that the modern age has shaped and forced our creativity and art into this manner, and left us with no other choice. On September 10, 2010 there was an exhibition of modern Tibetan art in Beijing entitled “Scorching Sun of Tibet”, which was received extremely well, with many people confessing that it “exceeded all expectations”. I think many people would have been surprised to find that when those artists who had been silent for so long, finally let their voices be heard, the things they had to say was actually quite informed and progressive. In addition, there have been two more exhibitions in Beijing related to Tibetan art, one called “Big and Beautiful Tibet” and another “Fascinating Tibet”. From “Beautiful” to “Fascinating” to “Scorching”, all these exhibitions seem to represent a kind of Tibet that has been negotiated and interpreted through art and creative process. However, we should pay more attention to what the purpose of these exhibitions are, and how others are engaging with them.

We still need to observe and take note of the many unique qualities of the Tibetan modern art community. There are two communities in Tibetan art; one which is involved with the Chinese Federation of Literary and Art Circles (CFLAC), and the other, an autonomous and independent collective, made up of artists such as the Gedun Choephel Artists' Guild, in spaces such as the the Melong Modern Art Space. The latter represent a much more organic and spontaneous representation of the Tibetan art community. All these communities have their own ways and characteristics, and artistic differences. From my experience of Tibetan culture, I can feel the multicultural conflict between the art, social environment and the freedom of artistic expression. This conflict and collision shows us in a visible or invisible manner, modern art in the context of frustration and helplessness.

Do Tibetans Benefit from “Comfortable Housing”? By Woeser

Photo taken in July 2007 in Yushu, Qinghai Province. Under construction is the village for "ecological migrants" but should be called a "new urban slum".

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on May 4, 2011 for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia and posted on her blog on May 9, 2011.

This blogpost follows on from the recent blogpost "Is Migration to Tibet Unrelated to Government Policies?" that critiqued a report based on the visit of a delegation of representatives of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Central Tibet and Amdo in September 2010.

The full text of the report is available on the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration: http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php?id=2213&articletype=flash&rmenuid=morenews&tab=1 

For more information on the policy of "Comfortable Housing", see this 2007 report by Human Rights Watch titled “No One Has the Liberty to Refuse”.

Photo taken in August 2008 in Rebkong, Amdo. Photo shows "Comfortable Housing".

Photo taken in August 2007, in a village for "ecological migrants" in Gormo, Qinghai. Photo shows their simple temple.

In the report based on the visit of a delegation of representatives of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there is one more conclusion which is worth discussing; the report claims that Tibetans benefit from “Comfortable Housing”. “Members of the delegation were able to confirm both the extent of this massive housing initiative, and the generally appreciative Tibetan attitude about it”.

This so-called “Comfortable Housing”, together with “Ecological Migration” and the “Settlement of Nomadic People” in Amdo and Kham areas, belongs to what the government calls “guiding farmers and herdsmen towards a more modern and civilised lifestyle”. The Autonomous Region’s top-level official, Zhang Qingli, said that “this is our struggle with the Dalai clique over taking the initiative to provide basic living conditions” and praised “the Communist Party as the real Living Buddha of the common people”.

Perhaps neither the Chinese nor the American sides have been aware of the fact that the U-Tsang farmers who moved from their old huts built from debris into “Comfortable Housing” came up with a name for their new homes: “Palkhar Lodroe Khangsar” - “Palkhar” means white forehead, which is a metaphor for bad luck; if, for example, both one’s parents die at a very young age, one can say one has “Palko kharpo charsha”, meaning that one’s forehead has gone white. “Lodroe” refers to cow lungs and intestines, which in the past would only be eaten by the lowest class of people; it is a metaphor for a vulgar and poverty-stricken lifestyle. Finally, “Khangsar” means new house - from these names created on the basis of traditional customs, we can see that farmers by no means approve of “Comfortable Housing”. Yet, what can disapproval really do? These are all integration measures taken by the government, one has no choice but to accept it.

People from Kham call “Comfortable Housing”, “Lagyag Khangba”, which means “hand-raising housing”. There is a whole series of “Lagyag” sayings; for instance “hand-raising solar stove”, “hand-raising tent” etc. “Hand Raising” simply means “to agree”. Only if one agrees, one will be given certain things; but the question is, what does one have to agree to? In line with the Party’s political principles of the “politics on command” and “maintaining stability is the top priority”, the first thing someone from the Autonomous Region when going through the civil servant examination has to attest is that one is “against separatism” and that one “criticises the Dalai”. When herdsmen move into “Comfortable Housing”, they have to raise their hands in approval and express that they are “against the Dalai clique” and that they “thank the Party”.

To build these housing compounds for herdsmen, during the first stage, the government provides ten thousand RMB and the people have to ask for a loan of ten thousand RMB, without any exceptions made to the single-storeyed Tibetan clay wall houses. In the second stage, the government provides ten thousand RMB and the herdsmen have to pay back an installment of ten thousand RMB, plus take out an additional loan of thirty thousand RMB, without any exceptions made to the red-tiled Han-style concrete blocks. And all houses have to be decorated with five-starred red flags, if not, they will be denounced. A local cadre said to me: “If one was really concerned about the needs of the herdsmen, instead of focusing on each village, the ‘settlements’ would be built somewhere near to where the nomads dwell during winter, this would actually help them. We know that the government is trying to use economic incentives as enticements. This is a grand idea but it does not really gain the approval of local herdsmen”.

In the vast Tibetan territory, “Comfortable Housing” in different areas has different emphases; the most terrible, however, is the method of “ecological migration”. Not long ago, the government “vigorously implemented a large-scale five year plan fostering the settlement of nomadic people from Qinghai Province, leading to fifty three thousand people leaving behind once and for all their nomadic lifestyles.” The main reason given was the degeneration of the grasslands caused by too much grazing. However, in reality, decades of continuous mining has been the main cause of destruction. I have seen some photos taken in the mid-1980s showing vast amounts of migrants from the outside who, like ants, crowded on the Matoe grasslands frantically digging for gold; today, this area has already become infertile. Another area of grasslands in Serthar, which is commonly referred to as the “swift golden horse”, has been exposed to mining for an entire ten years. Today, there is no gold left and people start to “return home”. But the area will never recover again.

Along with the disappearing of grassland areas and mineral resources such as gold, we also witness the erasure of traditional Tibetan culture and lifestyles. I will never forget the conversation I had with a few Khampa men in the new “ecological migrants” village, situated in the suburbs of Gormo in Qinghai Province, which is home to over 300 households. I asked them whether they liked it here or whether they preferred their home land? They said that of course they preferred their home land, since here there did not exist a single blade of grass and with any wisp of wind, there would be sandstorms. I also asked: when you moved here, did your Mountain Deity move with you? They lowered their heads and said: how is that possible? We had to abandon our Mountain Deity; and we also abandoned all our cattle and sheep...

Beijing, May 4, 2011

"Jampel! Jampel!" Memorial Show in Lhasa for Late Tibetan Artist Jampel

"Is Migration to Tibet Unrelated to Government Policies?" By Woeser

A report based on the visit of a delegation of representatives of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Central Tibet and the Amdo region of Tibet was recently made public and even translated into Chinese. As someone who has been in contact with this delegation, I am naturally interested in this report and have already discussed it with several fellow Tibetans. The general opinion is that after rushing through Tibet in 12 days, accompanied by Chinese officials, producing a report that touches upon such a vast variety of issues is quite an achievement.

However, first, it needs to be pointed out that the report states that “staff members enjoyed several hours of unaccompanied time each morning and evening”, during which they could “travel unescorted around Lhasa, observing city life and chatting with a variety of residents and visitors to the city”. To me, this just sounds like a wonderful thing.

Last year, I returned to Lhasa twice, and altogether spent four months there, witnessing with my own eyes the great show that is put on in the streets of Lhasa. For example, one day, the military police suddenly vacated the bustling streets of the city, the officers patrolling the old town changed their outfits into yellow sportswear or jeans and even the special police forces on the roofs of Tibetan houses covered up half of their bodies, making visible only a broad line of black hats appearing and disappearing on the roofs. The next day, it was reported on Tibetan TV that a group of domestic and foreign journalists had come to Lhasa to conduct interviews, and government officials asked them in all seriousness to report on the “real Tibet”. These kinds of big shows are often put on, Lhasa people have already grown accustomed to them. Hence, the report’s following sentence stating that “China’s willingness to open Tibet to foreign official visitors reflects growing confidence among Chinese authorities that conditions in Tibet have stabilised”, should be changed into “reflects the confidence among Chinese authorities in their presentation of the stable conditions in Tibet”.

In view of this, although the report touches upon many important problems, some of its conclusions are still worth questioning. For example, looking at the case of immigration, the report states that “indeed, a surprising finding is that Han migration appears to be occurring organically, and does not appear to be the result of a deliberate Chinese government policy to populate Tibet with non-Tibetans. The migration of ethnic Han settlers to Tibet is more the byproduct of Chinese economic development strategies than a goal of them”.

In reality, however, already before the protests in March 2008, Tibet went through a reform of the household registration system, so as to encourage people from inside China to settle in Tibet and provide them with a Tibetan hukou (household registration). Workers from Sichuan, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu and other provinces who came to build houses, open restaurants, repair cars, grow vegetables etc all had a “double hukou” and quite a few even changed their ethnic status. Many migrants bring their entire families along, so special migrant workers schools have been set up to cater to these people and even in local experimental primary schools or in Lhasa middle school, the proportion of non-Tibetan pupils is high. As for “college entrance exam migration”, out of the over 60 Tibetan students admitted to Beijing’s main universities, almost half are non-Tibetans who have changed their ethnic status and are officially registered as Tibetans.

Simultaneously, in the name of development and the need for outstanding talents and investment opportunities, a series of preferential policies was passed; for example in the 2000 “provisional regulations to attract talent” in Lhasa it is declared that “special preferential policies should apply to talent with regards to job title, research funding, salary, bonuses, accommodation, and household registration”. After the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, “Phoenix Weekly” reported in a special article titled “Gun Shots Startle Potala Palace”: “in 2006, the Tibet Autonomous Region formulated a series of policies and measures to encourage Chinese and foreign business people to participate in mining activities by providing them with special assistance regarding tax, land seizure, finance and other formalities”. In 2009, the “the summary of preferential policies for Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone” was launched, which placed emphasis on “combining the preferential policies regarding Tibet put forward by the Fourth Work Forum on Tibet with the actual situation of the Development Zone” and provide attractive preferential policies regarding land, tax, loans, foreign trade, industry and commerce, and administration. In terms of household registration, those who invest more than 100 thousand RMB will be promised to obtain a non-rural hukou for “themselves, their spouse and their children”. The rural hukou can solve the problem of the so-called special “blue-print hukou; after having worked or lived in the Tibet Autonomous Region for 3 years, people’s hukou will change into a non-rural, permanent one”.

Furthermore, the state examination to become a civil servant does not require a test in Tibetan language, which also represents an invisible encouragement to migrate. As for taxi drivers, which are even required to have a local hukou in the capital city Beijing, in Lhasa out of the over 1300 taxi-drivers, only a minority number are actually Tibetan. Also, after 2008, Tibet has started offering positions to former members of the PLA; for example, in the Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles, which I used to work for, many non-professional former members of the PLA have been employed over recent years.

Beijing, April 27, 2011

"Kirti Monastery Facing A Great Disaster" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on April 19, 2011 for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia and posted on her blog on April 27, 2011.

The unrest in Ngaba, Eastern Tibet, the subject of this blogpost, has been ongoing since the self-immolation of young monk, Phuntsog, from Kirti Monastery - on whom Woeser wrote in a previous blogpost. Woeser also wrote a poem dedicated to another Kirti monk who was detained on March 25, 2011, in Beijing. In this blogpost, Woeser also remembers another monk from Amdo's Labrang Monastery, Jamyang Jinpa, who died on April 3, 2011, due to torture in detention following his protest in front of foreign journalists at his monastery in April 2008.

The most recent report from Ngaba was released two days ago by International Campaign for Tibet, to read, follow the link.
 


On March 16, after the young monk Phuntsog died from self-immolation, over a thousand military police armed to the teeth surrounded the unarmed and defenseless Kirti Monastery. Starting from March 20, cadres and officials from all levels of Sichuan as well as Ngaba region and county took over 2500 monks through “patriotic education”; it is said that high officials from Beijing had hurried down to issue such strict instructions.

This “education” didn’t spare anyone. The monks in the monastery were divided into four groups and the armed police and cadres also separated into four work teams, supervising every single person, meticulously registering every single monk. In fact, the word “supervise” is too moderate; they monitored them, talked to them insistently and forced them to obey. If someone did not obey, well, the outcome would be very simple, they would brutally start beating them and then make them disappear; as for where they would disappear to, whether to prison or some other inhuman world, we do not know, we only know that up to now, hundreds of monks have been arrested. More than ten days ago, the news from a different monastery in Amdo, Labrang Monastery, arrived that the monk Jamyang Jinba had died from torture and other savage treatments. Three years ago, he was arrested for 15 days because he petitioned for peace and when he was released he had not only lost his sight in both eyes, every single bone in his body had been smashed to bits.

Not a single government official made their position known publicly or explained why the situation in Ngaba was this grim. On the contrary, they still preach how incredibly happy Tibetans are, how much freedom and human rights they enjoy, and how grateful they are to the Party etc; not a single word has been said about Kirti Monastery being surrounded. But on top of the presence of massive military force guarding the monastery, they even put up barbed wire netting, piled up sandbags, and erected watchtowers, thus setting up a defense structure, far exceeding that of an ordinary prison and more resembling a war-time concentration camp.

It has already been going on for a whole month; the monastery is unable to hold any normal Buddhist classes; the monks are unable to meditate or engage in religious practices, not only are they being encapsulated by “education” all day long, even their food supply has been cut off and is decreasing by the day. The people outside the monastery are burning with anxiety, they wanted to deliver butter, tsampa or bread to the monks but were ruthlessly rejected. The local authorities are trying to break up the close relationships between the monks and the ordinary people. Even when people want to go to the nearby temple to pray, they are only allowed to do so under the close supervision of armed police, only permitting one person at a time to enter and leave the temple.

The monks who told me about the above situation are in deep pain; although they are refugees living in exile in India, they are at least blessed with freedom, away from such fears. They said that it is extremely hard to get in touch with people from within Tibet so perhaps the actual situation there is even more grave. The human rights disaster that has befallen every monk in the Kirti Monastery, will have tragic effects upon this monastery with its long history and rich culture and will result in it being swamped with disaster. This reminds me of an event several years ago, when thousands of monk huts of Serthar Larung Gar Buddhist Institute were destroyed and thousands of Buddhist nuns were made destitute and homeless. At that time, the Khenpo (Abbot) Jigme Phuntsok reluctantly asked the nuns to accept their misfortune because any protests would have resulted in the destruction of the arduously established Buddhist institute.

The officials have no interest in trying to engage in conciliation, instead they step by step close in on the monastery, sending numerous vehicles to arrest the young monks. And when the people of Ngaba utilise the age-old method of blocking the streets to obstruct the arrests, what really shocked people was that the armed police suddenly let loose trained police-dogs, which fiendishly pounced on elderly, women and children. Honestly, such horrifying scenes I have only seen in films about, for example, World War Two, when the Nazis would release dogs to tear to pieces completely defenseless people. Yet, after “liberation”, aren’t Tibetans today supposed to be enjoying the best time they have had in history? But these kinds of cruelties have never occurred before on Tibetan ground in history!

There are almost 20 small monasteries attached to Kirti Monastery, spread over Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai - Amdo regions. Its prominent position in history and influential status today will not just be perished by the barrels of guns; it survived the disasters of the Cultural Revolution and will also survive the disasters today; also, it will widely spread this indomitable spirit throughout the entire Tibetan region. Every single monastery will become a Kirti Monastery, every single monk will become a Kirti Monastery monk, and Kirti will be remembered forever by Tibetan people for its solemn sacrifice, just as written in a poem for Jamyang Jinpa: “When you, countless and nameless, abandoned the flesh of your human body, did Buddha shed a tear or did he wear a smile? But at that moment, my confidence multiplied.”

Beijing, April 19, 2011