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Of Icons and Elvises:‘Tibetan Spirit’ in Tsherin Sherpa’s New Art

Katharine P. Burnett

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As Tsherin Sherpa contemplated making his newest set of paintings, he found himself asking, “What happens when a deity from an altar or a monastery is taken out of context? Is it still sacred or does it become secular? When an object or even a whole temple is placed in a museum, is one to engage with it as a sacred object or as a work of art? For that matter, what really is the difference between the image of a Buddha in a monastery and one in someone’s garden with artificial waterfalls? Or on the shelves of Costco?”1 Just as Marcel Duchamp’s urinal raised new questions about the nature of art and expectation in the early twentieth century,2 and Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes, Campbell’s Soup cans and celebrities-in-multiples asked another set of questions for art later in the century, Sherpa’s new art interrogates the way we understand objects today as works of art or for devotion.

Mindful of these issues over religion, art and context whilst feeding on a steady diet of updates from the news, Sherpa created a series of new works, many of which are illustrated here, for his first solo show in London. Most are painted in acrylic with gold or platinum leaf on linen or canvas whilst some are small works on paper. Each has layers of meaning.

Themes

Initially, Tsherin Sherpa’s new works can appear simple, straightforward and secular, yet several themes run through them. Few are blatantly obvious. With explication, however, each can be deciphered.

Though brought up on a strict diet of Tibetan Buddhism, Sherpa increasingly feels the need to break away from staid expectations and fossilised formulae for living. A Buddhist ‘identity’, he points out, can be as restrictive as a uniform. As his teacher used to explain, “When you under-stand the essence of the teaching, [it is as if] you have been wearing this jacket for a long time, and you have been soaking it in acid, and then everything is gone”.3

Just as Huineng (638–713), the sixth patriarch of Chinese meditational Buddhism, felt free to rip up the sutras once he

became enlightened,4 Sherpa’s constricting formal intellectual attire has worn away. More and more, he appreciates the philosophical aspects of Buddhism, and values the intellectual freedom that comes with a deep understanding of the Buddhist dharma. For Sherpa’s art, the result is paintings that are infused with profound meaning stabilised by Buddhist principles.

This suggests an approach similar to meditational Buddhism (Sanskrit: dhyana; Chinese: chan; Japanese: zen), and in the art world, an intellectual syzygy with the monk Mu Qi (Chinese, thirteenth century) and his iconic Six Persimmons (Fig. 1). In Mu Qi’s small monochrome ink painting, six persimmons in various phases of definition can prompt the devotee into a meditation on the concepts of being and nothingness. Similarly, the more Sherpa depicts seemingly secular topics and forms, the more his devout Buddhist ideals emerge, and the more his ‘secular’ works can be read as Buddhist meditations.

Each work in Tibetan Spirit probes aspects of ‘Tibetan-ness’: from Tibetan Buddhist deities, to the concepts that the deities represent, to a questioning of what Tibetan spirit is generally.

Likewise, each work also investigates the concept of ‘spirit’, a term of many meanings. Amongst other things, ‘spirit’ can indicate a good attitude, a ghost or a deity. At the same time, Sherpa notes that spirit can also indicate an alcoholic drink or, for that matter, gasoline or kerosene.5

To be sure, an essential ‘Tibetan Spirit’ is impossible to define. Yet, with the recent spate of Tibetan Buddhist self-immolations hastened by a drenching of the body with a volatile spirit, Sherpa believes the world’s percep-tion of what is ‘Tibetan’ is being affected. What is more, these auto-cremations are challenging traditional Tibetan notions of right conduct, thoughts, words and deeds in the face of social upheaval. They are affecting Tibetans’ spirit around the globe.

Much of Sherpa’s new work deals with the topic of Tibetan self-immolation. As such, he joins a growing list of

1 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.2 Many versions of Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1968) repurposed urinal sculpture exist, but the original, now lost, was titled Fountain and signed ‘R. Mutt’. It was photographed by Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) in 1917.3 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.4 Chinese artist Liang Kai (active early thirteenth century) once painted the subject. A hanging scroll attributed to him is The Sixth Chan Monk Huineng Tearing Up the Sutras (Private Collection), reproduced in To So Gen Min Meiga Taikan (Tokyo: Otsuka Kogeisha, 1929), Vol. 1, Fig. 76.5 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.

(Fig. 1)Mu Qi (Chinese, early thirteenth century–after 1279)

Six Persimmons Ca. 1250

Ink on paper; album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll38.1 x 36.2 cm (15 x 14 ¼ in)

Daitokuji, Kyoto, Japan

Image reproduced from Akiyama Terukazu, Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu, Tokyo, 1966–1972). Not on view in the current exhibition

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talk for practitioners. Unfortunately, I’ve also noticed that some of the younger generation of Tibetans [are] jaded and bored by traditional Buddhist thangkas and teachings. I hope to find a way so that they can relate to my imagery by its being somewhat familiar yet secular and different at the same time.11

Sherpa continues to create a new and transformed Tibetan art steeped in traditional Buddhist philosophy whilst being responsive to contemporary events and needs.

A brief biography of the artist

Tsherin Sherpa was born in Nepal in 1968 to a family of Tibetan heritage painters working in the religious traditions of Tibet (Fig. 2). Well trained by his father, Urgen Dorje (born 1948), an acclaimed thangka painter, Sherpa knows the intricacies of Buddhist scripture and iconography. Skilled in painting traditional thangkas, he creates nontraditional works that can provide the same meditational function as his more obviously religious works.

Since 1998, Sherpa has lived and worked outside of San Francisco, California. He has exhibited his work internationally to much acclaim in important galleries and museums around the world. His reputation is strong and growing.

Tsherin Sherpa’s new work

Whilst 8 Spirits (Fig. 3) does not obviously depict self-immolation, self-immolation assuredly is the topic. The repeated form of Buddhist spirits, in traditional and new colours of prayer flags, represents Buddhist prayers and other concepts.

The renderings of the figures in 8 Spirits is deceptively simple; the meaning of the painting multilayered. On one hand, the colourful spirits stand almost cheerful, exposed in tighty-whities and brightly coloured socks, their mouths open and almost smiling. They stand in a pose suggestive of John Travolta’s iconic stance in Saturday Night Fever.

6 Leigh Sangster, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Self-Immolation’, Hot Spot Forum, Cultural Anthro-pology Online, 11 April 2012, http://culanth.org /?q=node/526, accessed 20 August 2012.7 James A. Benn, Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007, p. 3.8 Benn, Burning for the Buddha, p. 4. 9 Carole McGranahan and Ralph Litzinger, ‘Intro-duction’, Hot Spot Forum, Cultural Anthropology Online, 11 April 2012, http://culanth.org/?q=node/526, accessed 20 August 2012.10 Tenzin Mingyur Paldron, ‘Virtue and the Remaking of Suffering’, Hot Spot Forum, Cultural Anthro-pology Online, 11 April 2012, http://culanth.org/?q=node/526, accessed 20 August 2012.11 Sherpa, email to the author, 5 September 2012.

(Fig. 2)

Tsherin Sherpa in his Oakland, California, studio2012

Photograph by the author

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contemporary Tibetan artists who are critically responding to this trend in their art, including Karma Phuntsok, Phuntsok Tsering, Tenzing Rigdol, Tashi Norbu, Ngawang Jorden, Tenzin Jigme and Sonam Dolma.6

Making this set of paintings exhibited in the Rossi & Rossi show helped Sherpa to work through the fraught issues sur-rounding self-immolation. Within the Buddhist and scholarly communities, some see self-immolation as an enactment of an event in the Lotus Sutra.7 Others, however, even those sympathetic to the Lotus Sutra, consider it to be a loss, as it prohibits the body from being a final karmic gift to other sentient beings. (Insects and animals, for example, could benefit by eating the corpse).8

Though the Lotus Sutra is a seminal text for Mahayana Buddhism, it is not central to Tibetan Buddhism. Conse-quently, it seems Tibetan Buddhists are reaching out to forms of Buddhism and social activism practiced outside of the Tibetan social context. As cultural anthropologists Carole McGranahan and Ralph Litzinger note, “Tibet has no history of self-immolation as sacrifice, religious offering, or political protest”.9 Nonetheless, rhetoric scholar Tenzin Mingyur Paldron explains,

It is not a standard of loss or hopelessness that Tibetans are rallying around, nor are these acts simply a call to conscience. At stake is a harm threatening not only Tibetans but also others under occupation, as well as those seeking to break from social and political cycles that seem never-ending in the suffering they reproduce. The story of the Buddha is a lesson about how one responds as a witness to suffering, rather than an argument against or justification of suffering. In order to enact breaks in certain cycles of suffering, there must be a willingness to endure some of the pain one witnesses, rather than mere desire to manage pain without ever touching it.

She continues,

It is in the cultivation of a particular attitude of possibility, one based on a readiness to suffer, that acts of virtuous pain may re-order our sense of how the world might be perceived. Such acts of self-suffering must not be oversimplified, for they underscore the harm in structures of knowledge and power that would rather ignore than reconsider; contain instead of imagine the crossings. Beings can be trapped within many kinds of patterns and walls—political, legal, and philosophical—all of which may pose obstacles to deeper understanding. Yet we all know, at least theoretically, that certain acts are capable of casting fissures into walls, even of leaping outside them.10

Along with the concept of self-immolation evoked in Sherpa’s works is the notion of prayer flags and, by extension, prayer. As such, these paintings also indicate a corollary topic: the potential for compassion and mercy. The subtext of these works, therefore, seems to be to remind us of the possibility of an end to suffering (Buddhist enlightenment), and ultimately, the extinction of suffering through cycles of reincarnation (nirvana).

Along with these ideas, however, are other goals for Sherpa’s art. He explains,

Firstly, in my work, I [want] to refrain from sounding like a Buddhist teaching. I feel that much of the Buddhist view is very relevant in today’s world but I also understand that so many people’s minds turn away when I begin using unfamiliar Buddhist terminology. In a way, humanity already has so many distinctions or forms that keep us separate from understanding one another, I try to use skillful means to make my paintings accessible in [the] day-to-day life of many types of people, not just Buddhists or Tibetans but [also] Atheists, Christians, etc. For example, when the Dalai Lama gives talks, he usually gives a more public talk that is acces-sible to everybody than a more dharma-specific

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12 Sherpa, email to the author, 5 September 2012.13 Sherpa, email to the author, 5 September 2012.14 Robert Beer, The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, Boston: Shambala Publications, Inc., 1999, pp. 171–87.15 Sakyamuni Buddha preached that the Noble Eight-fold Path is attainable through the Right Views (i.e., the understanding of suffering and its cause), Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct (moral life), Right Livelihood (preferably the monastic life), Right Effort (the maintenance of will power), Right Mindfulness (the examination and evaluation of one’s progress) and Right Meditation, where meditation is the final step and the only means leading ultimately to enlightenment. 16 Sherpa, email to the author, 5 September 2012. 17 Sherpa explains that the five colours of the traditional prayer flag represent the Five Enlightened Buddha Families (Nampar nangdze/Nam namg [Sk: Vairocana]; Mitrugpa [Sk: Akṣhobhya], Wöpakme [Sk: Amidtābha], Rinchen Jung ne/Rin jung [Sk: Ratnasaṃbha] and Dön yö drub pa/Dön drub [Sk: Amoghasiddhi]); the Five Directions and the Five Elements (earth, space, fire, air and water). Sherpa, email to the author, 24 August 2012; Beer, The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, pp. 90–93. 18 Sherpa, email to the author, 24 August 2012.19 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.20 Thubten Ngodup, a Tibetan layman living in exile in India, put himself to the flame in New Delhi in 1998. Edward Wong, ‘Tibetan Who Sets Himself Afire Dies’, The New York Times, 17 March 2001, www.nytimes.com /2011/03/18/world/asia/18tibet.html, accessed 4 September 2012. 21 Janet Gyatso, quoted in Asia Sentinel, 3 September 2012, http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_ content&task =view&id=4789&Itemid =189, accessed 4 September 2012.

(Fig. 4)

Andy WarholEight Elvises

1963Silk-screen ink, silver paint and spray paint on linen

208 x 358 cm (82 x 141 in)

© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London 2012. Reproduction taken from Phaidon Editors, Steven Bluttal & Dave Hickey, Andy Warhol “Giant” Size, London:

Phaidon Press, 2006, p.197. Not on view in the current exhibition

gasoline cans. Each can is in a different colour, and each bears the face of a wrathful protector spirit. The spirits’ faces are painted in ghostly white outline, enmeshed in the star-shaped thik tse grid measurement. This grid is an element taken from the traditional Tibetan painting technique for establishing the correct scale and form of icons.

The separate paper sheets for the cans represent traditional square or rectangular Tibetan prayer flags. The cans’ repeated order from yellow, purple, red, green, orange, blue and pink, and back again in alternating rows, suggests the flags flapping in the wind, disseminating prayers through space.

As the colours are not strictly traditional, however, they represent an adjustment to the iconography. Whereas tra-ditional prayer flags are always in yellow, blue, red, green and white colours,17 here, the purple, orange and pink are new additions to the form. That the white flag is not present is not a comment on what white can symbolise, but rather a comment on shifting Tibetan needs. Nonetheless, Sherpa’s reference is more ideological than specific, and as such represents the concept of a new and modern prayer flag responding to new and modern prayers.18

The new iconography of the prayer flags cum gas cans is a clear-cut response to Tibetan self-immolation. Moreover, in this painting, Sherpa’s forty-nine gas cans represent the forty-nine days of formal Buddhist prayer ceremonies that are held after a person dies and whilst waiting for the soul to decide to reincarnate or attain nirvana.19

The phenomenon of self-immolation is new to Tibetan society. It was only in 1998 that the first Tibetan auto-cremated.20 Yet, at the time of writing, already more than fifty Tibetan monks, nuns and laity throughout the world have extinguished themselves in flame. As Tibetan Buddhism scholar Janet Gyatso explains, “Today the target of Tibet’s recent self-immolations is an outer enemy: an intrusive, re-pressive, unsympathetic state” of the People’s Republic of China. This is in contrast to the traditional form of ascetic practice, which “targeted an inner enemy: selfish clinging, vanity, enmity”.21

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Yet, it is not Travolta that Sherpa is referencing, but Andy Warhol and his paintings of Elvis Presley (Fig. 4). Sherpa appreciates the iconic turn of Warhol’s work, noting,

In contemporary culture, Elvis began to have such a mythology and worship surrounding him that even after his death people still have sightings as if he were a spirit. [With] Warhol’s repetition of the image and degradation through silk-screen mistakes, he begins to erode that projection of fame.

Sherpa continues,

In a similar manner, Tibetan deities have various meanings projected upon them. People who have not been properly initiated might be missing the essence behind the painting, thereby attaching themselves to a…simpler [and] incomplete meaning.12

Sherpa’s goal in repeating a spirit image is to force viewers ‘to see their own perceptions’, which he hopes will create a dialogue that comes closer to his intended view for the piece.13

Warhol’s eight repetitions of Elvis have a particular resonance for Sherpa. The number 8 is a potent signifier in

Tibetan Buddhism. It refers to the Eight Auspicious Symbols, bkra shis rtags brgyad (the lotus, endless knot, golden fishes, parasol, victory banner, golden treasure vase, right-spiraling white conch shell and dharma wheel).14 As well, it refers to the Eight Worldly Concerns, Jigten Choe gyed (the desire for wanting what one wants, for happiness, fame and praise, and the fear of the opposites of these concepts). Most powerfully, it refers to Sakyamuni Buddha’s Noble Eight-fold Path15: the path of progressive detachment that leads to the extinction of the self and escape from the cycle of rebirth into nirvana.

With this in mind, Sherpa’s explanation of why he has grouped the spirits together in this painting is poignant:

The figures…stand together in unity since we are currently seeing more cohesion around the world of the Tibetan diaspora. The self-immolations have created a shared awareness throughout the community who are now keeping that focal energy alive.16

Consequently, the fundamental reference of this work is not a Warholian Elvis but a popular culture of a different order: the Buddhist faith of Tibetans. The ultimate meaning of the eight spirits’ pose is one of victory; specifically, the victory of the god, and the victory over negative emotions, in this case, self-immolation. This painting is a representation of the triumph of the Buddhist doctrine, and through it, the release of the soul from the world of suffering.

Still, the painting has yet another undercurrent running through it, and that is the theme of commercialism. The record price brought in a recent sale of Warhol’s Eight Elvises resonates for Sherpa with the sale of thangkas as souvenirs or artworks rather than for their meditational and devotional properties. For Sherpa, this is yet another instance of the secular world putting a price on the iconic.

Where the theme of self-immolation was not immediately obvious in 8 Spirits, in 49 Gas Cans, it is clear (Fig. 5). 49 Gas Cans features seven rows of seven multicoloured

(Fig. 3)

8 Spirits2012

Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on canvas127 x 228.6 cm (50 x 90 in)

Self-immolation has transformed traditional Tibetan practices. In changing Tibet’s religious practices, it has radically altered traditional Tibetan responses to social and political pressures. In consequence, it has also forced a change in Tibetan culture. These changes are rocking Tibetans’ spirit around the world. Sherpa’s 49 Gas Cans addresses these issues.

The theme of self-immolation is also active in DOI 1 and DOI 2 (Figs. 6 and 7). As in some of Tsherin Sherpa’s other works, however, in these paintings this theme is not immedi-ately apparent. It helps to know that ‘DOI’ stands for ‘Death of Innocence’, the parenthetical titles of the two paintings and a homonymic play on DUI, ‘driving under the influence’.

In DOI 1 and DOI 2, innocence is represented by toys that fall around or on a centrally placed grey spirit with a head resembling a Tibetan deity. The toys suggest the innocence of childhood and the state of being uninformed, untaught and inexperienced. The death of this innocence, especially as indicted by the inclusion of silhouetted figures in DOI 1, seems to indicate full acknowledgment of world events.

Of these works, Sherpa explains,

I feel that the self-immolation of Tibetans has begun to disintegrate much of the world’s naive perception that [Tibetans] are all peaceful enlightened beings who almost gracefully accept any torments or condition placed upon them. As [the] Tibetan diaspora evolves, the world will see various viewpoints emerging that can’t be easily summarised.22

Some of the silhouetted figures at the lower edge of DOI 1 are religious, some secular. Anchored in the right corner is

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a Thai Buddha seated in meditation and representing enlightenment. In the left corner, representing the physical and cosmic extinction attainable through nirvana, is a representation of Yamantaka, Lord of Death. In between, are women workers of different realms of existence: in corporate business (carrying a briefcase) and in sex (a Playboy Bunny), as well as women engaged in sexual acts. Along with many other figures, Sherpa has depicted a leaping child, a photographer shooting his camera and a soldier firing a gun.

For a painting of a large grey spirit in his underwear, a title such as Untitled suggests some ambiguity of meaning (Fig. 8). Ambiguity, however, is far from the case. Rather, it signals the artist’s conflicted response to problematic world events, especially those concerning self-immolation. What is the right response for him? For each of us? How should we respond to those who are killing themselves? Which is the correct path: Introspective meditations on being and reality? Extrospective radical activism? Sympathetic self-immolation?

Untitled is dominated by a grey-skinned figure with the face and appurtenances of a deity, standing in the victory pose. The dull grey is easy to read against the colourful elements in the circular mandorla behind him. The skin is neither the colour of traditional Tibetan Buddhist deities, nor quite bluntly, is it either black or white, or only sacred or exclusively profane. Its indeterminacy underscores the artist’s conflicted response to the right (Buddhist) conduct for living.

The mudras are new, too, indicating another break with traditional Tibetan iconography. The figure’s right hand is raised too high for any abhaya mudra (the mudra signifying ‘do not fear’); its left hand is naturalistically at its waist.

22 Sherpa, email to the author, 5 September 2012.

(Fig. 5)

49 Gas Cans2012

Archival ink, gold leaf, gouache and pen on Hahnemuehle fine art paperEach 20.3 x 17.8 cm (8 x 7 in)

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(Figs. 6 and 7)

DOI (Death of Innocence) 12012

Platinum leaf, acrylic and ink on canvas122 x 91.5 cm (48 x 36 in)



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(Fig. 9)

Blind Spirits2012

Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on linen122 x 147.3 cm (48 x 58 in)

23 Sherpa, email to the author, 24 August 2012. 24 Sherpa, interview with the author, August 4, 2012. Sherpa’s references to Damien Hirst are discussed more fully in Katharine P. Burnett, ‘Tibetan Buddhist Art in a Globalized World of Illusion: The Contemporary Art of Ang Tsherin Sherpa’, ‘西藏藝術在跨國化清淨的世界: 安才仁的當代畫’, in Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and Ying-Ying Lai, Guest Eds., Special Issue: ‘Art and Politics in Today’s China and Taiwan’, Modern Chinese Studies [當代中國研究], Vol. 18, No. 2, 2011, pp. 17–18.25 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.26 Two Spirits is reproduced in Burnett, ‘Tibetan Buddhist Art in a Globalized World of Illusion’. It is also currently available at www.tsherinsherpa.com and www.rossirossi.com/contemporary/artists/tsering.sherpa#slide-red-spirit.27 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.

however, these figures can no longer be read as deities. They are Tibetan spirits.

Troublingly, however, in this painting the addorsed forms crouch down, as if in defeat. Their faces are anguished, and the snake bracelets, anklets and armbands appear more as shackles than jewellery. The spirits appear to have closed their eyes to the world’s events being played out in miniaturised silhouette along the lower edge of the com-position. They give the impression of being overwhelmed and unable to help the tormented.

Looking closely at the silhouetted forms, mixed in with the sabres and swords, a strafing airplane and armed soldiers, as well as birds, bats and spiders, are hands in threatening gestures to others (as if shooting a gun) and ultimately to themselves (holding a cigarette). The motif of two fingers at the far left in the shape of a gun was moti-vated by the recent murder in Sanford, Florida, of unarmed seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, killed by a vigilante who felt justified in his actions by Florida law. Sherpa has also included some children playing, a flying witch inspired by the Harry Potter books and movies, and a howling wolf invoking OR7, the lone wild grey wolf that has recently been ambling northern California and Oregon looking for a mate. “Overall”, he says, this painting is more generally “about what we see or hear in the world”.27

Nonetheless, towards the right is a representation of Chinnamastā, the deity who cuts off her own head to drink her blood. She is recognised here by a figure holding a head whilst blood spurts out of her neck. The wrathful form of a benevolent deity, Chinnamastā symbolises cutting off one’s ego and attachment to oneself. Towards the left is a lithe dancer with one leg raised, similar in form but not exactly like iconographic representations of Shiva as Nataraja, the Hindu Lord of the Dance, who dances this exhausted world out of existence and ushers in the next vital period of hope.

Though it is tempting to read cynicism and despair into this painting, cynicism and despair are far from the point. Sherpa is simply aware that life is complex and transformation

Instead of the tiger skin, symbolising overcoming fear,23 this figure wears polka-dot underwear. The polka dots provide a reference to the spot paintings of commercially successful British artist Damien Hirst (born 1965). Here, however, they also signify the contemporary art view about art education,24 and its goals for enabling a student to earn not just a living but also fame through commercial success.

What Sherpa has painted is not a deity but rather a spirit infused with Buddhist precepts; that is, the spirit of a philo-sophical Buddhism. With this image, yet another theme for this new set of paintings emerges. Here, ‘Tibetan Spirit’ refers to a Tibetan’s spirit that remains resiliently Buddhist whilst under social and cultural pressures to secularise.

In Untitled, the spirit stands in front of a circular mandorla filled with a myriad of people, cartoon characters, symbols and signs, some as innocent as a Snoopy dog, others laden with emotion and freighted with politics. These multitude images, Sherpa explains, are a miscellany that he found on the Internet or heard about on radio news whilst he painted. Just as he listened to the steady patter of conversations between his father and visitors to his father’s studio when he was growing up, he now finds he paints best with the relaxing hum of talk shows, the news and interviews about current events on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air. He explains,

The news stays in the background in my head all day long. Something is happening in Syria. I can’t visually see it—I don’t watch TV—but from the words, I picture it a certain way. It is like a shadow in the back of my mind.25

These ‘shadows’ work themselves into Sherpa’s imagination and out of his paintbrush. In Untitled and other paintings, they represent the distractions of everyday life, some more serious than others, but all representative of the craving for pleasure, power and continued life, the Historical Buddha’s Second Noble Truth.

Of the colourful ‘shadows’ encircling the grey spirit, some represent newsworthy events, such as a protester holding

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a Syrian flag and an incomplete face of political activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Others, also representing world news, are more specific to Tibet. In the top right quadrant, these include images of the Dalai Lama, a pair of monks physi-cally locked in debate, activist rapper Tenzing Tsundu and Jamphel Yeshi, who set himself on fire and ran through the streets of New Delhi earlier this year.

Camouflaged amongst the disruptive elements of everyday life, however, is a butterfly. This is Sherpa’s telltale emblem, symbolic of chaos theory and the potential for even small movements to effect large-scale change. With the large-scale spirit standing over them all, we are reminded that the potential of a (Buddhist) victory over suffering is possible.

Where Untitled features a fully transformed spirit, Blind Spirits shows deities undergoing secularisation (Fig. 9). As in some of Sherpa’s earlier paintings, such as Two Spirits (2010),26 the figures’ special colour seems to drip off their bodies, even as their heads (thinking aspect), hands and feet (acting and doing aspects) retain their full colour and snake-jewellery. (In the Tibetan tradition, snakes symbolise overcoming anger.) Without the proper iconography,

(Fig. 8)

Untitled (2012)2012

Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on linen147.3 x 122 cm (58 x 48 in)

(Fig. 11)

Red Protector 2012

Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on canvas152.5 x 122 cm (60 x 48 in)

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28 Sherpa, interview with the author, 4 August 2012.29 Sherpa, email to the author, 5 September 2012.30 Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman, Worlds of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion, New York: Tibet House New York, in association with The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Distributors, 1999, p. 268.

(Fig. 10)

Blue Protector 2012


In his Protector works, Sherpa transforms iconographically correct renditions of Buddhist deities into whorls of paint, third eyes in polychrome, as it were, and deities into spirits. The vertiginous compositions calm through a visual circumambulation of the spirits’ forms. Close inspection reveals altered states of the heads, hands, jewellery, and in the case of the Blue Protector, a fleshy belly and orange flame.

In Tsherin Sherpa’s new work, the spirits index the power of all wrathful deities to provide sanctuary for the tormented as they brave descent into underworlds of terror and death. The new works alert us to the fact that his constricting intellectual formal attire has worn away—or, more aptly, perhaps, just as for the pigments colouring the spirits in his new works, his intellectual, cultural and artistic strictures have dripped off. The social responsibilities are still great, to be sure, but Sherpa is free.

is inevitable, whether in (Tibetan) society, in (Tibetan) art or in art made for (Tibetan) Buddhist purposes. “If one studies traditional Tibetan Buddhist artworks”, he points out, “trans-formations occur there too, with the gradual inclusion over time of landscape and other elements into what first were paintings exclusively of the deities”. If anything, Sherpa is cynical that change hasn’t happened more quickly.

He explains,

Because sometimes when we look at the Buddha image, we are too attached to the images. We are not able to bring the essence of the image into our day-to-day life….‘Compassion’ has become a symbol like Batman or Guanyin. Static. The essence has to flow in our day-to-day lives so we can function [compassionately]…. I am trying to envision that flowing in our day-to-day secular life.28

Perhaps, therefore, we should reconsider the ultimate meaning (if there is one) of Blind Spirits. Are these powerful spirits really impotent to help, or are they just temporarily discour-aged by the suffering of the world? As in Untitled, the even more apparent butterfly motif in Blind Spirits signifies the possibility for change, transformation and hope.

Whilst Sherpa’s other new works respond to the theme of self-immolation, Blue Protector and Red Protector (Figs. 10 and 11) more closely consider issues of an evolving identity in the Tibetan diaspora.

Sherpa explains,

The deity used in traditional thangkas uses a rigid grid system to delineate how the body is formed. Without this proper formation, it is not considered to have attributes to be used in normal means of practice. Using this deity creation as a metaphor, the Tibetan diaspora is having to come to terms [with] its various identities without having a ground yet. Tibetans have become disconnected from where they should be. Is one considered a proper Tibetan if they

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grew up in Nepal or America and have never set foot in Tibet? The cultural influences differing amongst the diaspora can make different Tibetans seem almost foreign to each other.

For that matter, he continues,

[I]f a sacred object is removed from its natural or original environment, does it still remain the sacred object or will it begin to form a new identity? The two paintings actually attempt to explore this issue.29

Sherpa developed the Protectors’ forms from wrathful deities. For Blue Protector, it was a blue-bodied Vajrapani, the Thunderbolt Bearer, symbol of the Buddha’s power. For Red Protector, it was Vajrakilaya (Vajrakila) bearing a phurba (a triangular dagger-spike symbolic of meditation) and tram-pling a white-headed winged figure of ignorance.

Whilst these paintings explore issues of an evolving Tibetan identity in the Tibetan diaspora, their explicit themes are protection and, by extension, asylum, shelter and refuge. Vajrakilaya, a Father-Mother deity, is an especially potent symbol of this idea. As art historian Marylin Rhie and religion scholar Robert Thurman explain of Vajrakilaya forms generally,

These archetypes provide ideal templates for the sub-jectivity of the practitioner who must mobilize the con-templative mind and body to brave the descent into the underworld of terror and death. Only from such a subjectivity does one dare to dissolve the stable, coarse body-mind into the subtle body mind of lunar luminance, solar radiance, and pitchdark immi-nence, the nearest to absolute zero and therefore the most fertile and powerful and subtle mind states standing at the threshold of the transparent, predawn illumination of clear light. The development of such fierce archetypes for navigating the fearful realms of the unconscious and confronting the most dangerous aspects of reality is one of the supreme achievements of Tibetan depth psychology and Tibetan art.30

Katharine P. Burnett is Director of the East Asian Studies Program and Associate Professor of Chinese Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis. She researches and publishes on diverse topics of social and cultural issues, art theory and criticism, and the history of collecting and display in China and the Asian diaspora from the sixteenth century through the contemporary.

plaTes

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previous pages:

DOI (Death of Innocence) 1 (detail)2012


opposite:



20



22

previous pages:

8 Spirits2012

Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on canvas127 x 228.6 cm (50 x 90 in)

opposite:

Lost Spirit2012

Gold leaf, acrylic, gouache and ink on paper61 x 45.7 cm (24 x 18 in)

26

Spirit (Dreamer) 2012

Gold leaf, acrylic, gouache and ink on paper55.9 x 40.7 cm (22 x 16 in)

28

Untitled (2012)2012


30

previous pages:

Untitled (2012) (detail)2012


opposite:

Blind Spirits 2012

Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on linen122 x 147.3 cm (48 x 58 in)

34

Blue Protector2012


36

Red Protector2012


following pages:

Red Protector (detail)2012


49 Gas Cans2012

Archival ink, gold leaf, gouache and pen on Hahnemuehle fine art paperEach 20.3 x 17.8 cm (8 x 7 in)

38

Tsherinsherpa

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Tsherin Sherpa was born in 1968 in Kathmandu, Nepal. He lives and works in Oakland, California, USA.

Education

1991–96Buddhist Philosophy under the tutelage of various Buddhist Masters, Nepal1988–89Computer Science and Mandarin, Taipei, Taiwan 1983–88Traditional Tibetan thangka painting apprenticeship with his father, Master Urgen Dorje Sherpa

Selected Exhibitions

2012Tibetan Spirit, Rossi & Rossi, London, UKVictory!, Rossi & Rossi, London, UK2011Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, USATradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond, The Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, USAWhat’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?, Rossi & Rossi, London, UKBeyond the Mandala–Contemporary Art from Tibet, Volte Gallery, Mumbai, India, in collaboration with Rossi & Rossi, London, UKArt Stage Singapore, Rossi & Rossi, Singapore2010Scorching Sun of Tibet, Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing, ChinaTradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, USABuddha in the Hood, Red Mill Gallery, Johnson, USA2009Deity Thangka Paintings, Alta Galleria, Berkeley, USA2007Sacred Images, Alta Galleria, Berkeley, USAContemporary Thangka, Smith Andersen Editions, Palo Alto, USACulture-Mutt, The Green Lantern Gallery, Chicago, USA

2002Tibetan Thangka, The Miyares Gallery, Sonoma Academy, Santa Rosa, USA2001 Tibetan Thangka Painting, Oriental Museum, Durham University, Durham, UK2000 Yamantaka, Fort Mason, San Francisco, USA 1999 Mandala of Compassion, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, USAAmitayus, Sonoma Museum of Visual Arts, Santa Rosa, USA

Fellowships & Residences

2010 Rubin Museum of Art: Himalayan Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, USA2008 Asia Alive, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA2007 Asia Alive, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA2003 Asia Alive, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA1999 Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, Santa Rosa, USA

46 Sket

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TSHERIN SHERPATIBETAN SPIRIT12 OCTOBER–29 NOvEmBER 2012

Coordination: Martin ClistEditing: Eti Bonn-MullerPhotography: Unless specified all photography by Matt Pia, except for pp. 27, 28,42–43 & 47, Tsherin SherpaDesign: Ruth Höflich

© Rossi & Rossi Ltd. 2012Text copyright © the author. Unless indicated otherwise, all images courtesy of Rossi & Rossi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the copyright holders and publishers

ISBN 978 1 906576 32 5

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

First published to accompany the exhibition:

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Cover:Blind spirits (detail)2012Gold leaf, acrylic and ink on linen122 x 147.3 cm (48 x 58 in)

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