Tsherin Sherpa, Muted Expressions

0:00:06.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re in the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, in a gallery that is devoted to classical Tibetan art. But in the middle is this distinctly contemporary sculpture.

0:00:17.9 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: We’re standing here in front of Tsherin Sherpa’s Muted Expressions created in 2022. Some people have described this sculptural work like a three-dimensional cloud that is made up of hands, arms, feet, legs connected together as sort of adornments or garlands by the bodies of snakes.

0:00:41.7 Dr. Steven Zucker: It’s so complicated. The knees are at angles, the elbows are at angles, and every hand seems to have a different gesture.

0:00:50.3 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: The hand gestures, the mudras that have a particular meaning, the feet, the snakes, everything’s individually crafted and then put together as a large, very impressive, almost floating, yet very heavy sculpture.

0:01:04.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: And because hands, like faces, are so expressive, there’s a sense of a multiplicity of what each foot even is trying to express to us.

0:01:13.6 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: While they demonstrate a bodily quality, at the same time for me, they also indicate absence.

0:01:21.2 Dr. Steven Zucker: The kind of chaos that results from that absence is held together by a clarity that is the result of an imperfect symmetry that divides and organizes these forms.

0:01:33.0 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: We tend to see several axes in the sculpture and perhaps reminding us of how thangkas in Tibet were created using a grid-like guiding system, yet interestingly, it is maybe that which is left out that so strongly contributes to how one might encounter and read this artwork.

0:01:52.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: Your reference to traditional Himalayan art is so interesting when we look at this vividly modern work. The artist was schooled in traditional practice by his father, after sometimes studying computer science in Taiwan, and was able to establish himself as a traditional thangka painter, producing work for monasteries in California and in Boulder, Colorado. But it was also during this period that he began to spend time with contemporary artists, and seeing the possibilities of fusing his traditional practices with contemporary art.

0:02:26.1 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: Some people have pointed out this sense of disjointedness, maybe diasporic experience moving around and about and being exposed to different types of environments. I would also like to point out that this sculpture was created shortly after the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015, so there have also been readings of this artwork as hands and feet sticking out of all the buildings and brick that tumbled down and claimed countless lives in Nepal.

0:02:57.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: But while this can be read as the limbs of victims, it also can be seen as a kind of regeneration. The artist went to traditional metalworkers in Nepal and drew on their expertise.

0:03:09.8 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: Absolutely, and that’s what he’s actually shared that this moment of encountering destruction after the earthquake was a moment when he considered what role he as an established artist could play in elevating other artists and elevating traditional techniques that are at risk of being forgotten about. It was especially the metalworkers in the Kathmandu Valley that were highly revered for their very sophisticated ways of creating sculptures.

0:03:38.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: And it’s so important to see Himalayan art, not only in a traditional sense, but to see it grappling with contemporary issues, that is, a region that is part of the contemporary world. Less than two years ago, this sculpture was on display in Venice at the Biennale, the first time that Nepal had a National Pavilion.

0:03:58.7 Dr. Jorrit Britschgi: This piece was created for the Nepal Pavilion in Venice, and it was really a window into the rich artistic legacy of the Himalayan regions that it allowed people to have. We said we might read this piece as an expression of a diasporic experience, at the same time, we just might as well read it as an expression of our shared global experience today, the sense of disjointedness, of fragmentation, so it both speaks to the artist’s individual background, but it also speaks very powerfully to how we might conceive our times today.

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