FEBRUARY 2023 CONFERENCE

HELFFER

Visualising marginality: contemporary art in Tibet and Tibetan artists
by Liu Chang, PhD student EPHE/CRCAO

will take place on Tuesday 21 February 2023, at 6pm, in the auditorium of the Cernuschi Museum.

Modern and contemporary art in Tibet never seems to have any connection with the art movement in the rest of the world; it rarely even participates in contemporary art activities in mainland China and remains very little known. According to the Tibetan-Chinese artist Gade (2003), it is like a strange creature, which has grown and developed without visible preparation, and which suddenly emerges as a mixture of disco neon lights, butter lamps from the Jokhang Temple and the Potala Palace, with plastic coconut leaves at its feet. This presentation attempts to show what contemporary Tibetan art can be in its social context: how Tibetan artists engage in the (de)construction of identity (local/globalized, authentic/imagined and individual/collective); what role they play at the crossroads between tradition and modernity, in the political scenario and the vagaries of the market.