The Look into ones one’s Face

The Western image of Tibet is often one-sided and imbued with clichés which are either about Chinese repression or the myth of the legendary “Shangrila”. The fact that Tibet is a complex modern society is far more rarely perceived. In 2009, Lhasa, the capital, is a mixture of Chinese small-town streets lined with billboard-decorated concrete buildings and an ancient Tibetan city centre with gold-gleaming temple roofs. Lhasa is a meeting point for pilgrims from all directions and, at the same time, a garrison town and a commercial centre.

In the last years, in spite of all restrictions, a vibrant art scene has established itself. Its development is thriving on far-reaching changes within the subjugated Tibetan society – on a thin dividing line between post-communist movements, global internet culture and Buddhism. A handful of young artists, among them Chinese colleagues living in Tibet for a long time, have founded a gallery in the heart of the old town. It bears the name of Gendün Chöpel, the first modern artist and scientist who is an icon of the secular freethinking people of Tibet.

For the first time, photo documents from eleven artists of the Gendün Chöpel Gallery are to be seen in a Western country. These allow some very personal insights into the Tibetan everyday life between tradition, repression and the debate over a modern Tibetan identity. The title of the exhibition – “The look into one’s own face” – has been chosen by the photographers themselves because it is an old Tibetan phrase. In Buddhism it means the moment when a man or a woman reaches a fundamental knowledge of his or her own being unhampered by prejudice – that is when s/he is “enlightened”.