Contemporary Tibetan Art; Towards the New Identity

Contemporary Chinese Art has been cerebrated in the midst of Contemporary Art boom. Political problem of Tibet has been brought into daylight accompanied by the opening of Beijing Olympic. In between these two, there is still an unknown identity that has been struggling into the light of recognition – it is the existence of the Tibetans who were born and taught under the Maoist Chinese government of post-1966 Cultural Revolution.

Gonkar Gyatso is one of these Tibetans; he has been making art works in London on the subject of his dual identity of “Tibet” and “China”, ever since he has learnt Contemporary Art in Beijing. The serial photography work “Life” consists of four self-portraits of the artist himself, each of which presenting him in different yet crossing over cultures – pre-Cultural Revolution, post-Cultural Revolution, exile in India, and immigration in London – representing the multiple-figure of the artist.

It could be argued that this work symbolises the identity dilemma of the artist, whose works were influenced by the traditional Tibetan Buddhist Arts yet criticised by the exile community of Tibet in India as being “improper” to the sacred art; i.e., being rejected from the community where his ethnic origin resides, the figure of the artist has been simultaneously split and integrated between “Tibetan” and “Chinese,” calling for the recognition of its unique existence. The unrecognised minority existence of an identity = subjectivity is demanding the possibility of creation and recognition of a new singular identity that consists of plural subjectivities.

(*The image has been retrieved from the artist's own web site for non-commercial purposes, and its copyright belongs to the artist himself.)

(*A modified version of this article has been published in "invisible man / paper" at G/P Gallery in Tokyo and Institute of Contemporary Art bookshop in London.)