Human spiritual existence in a digital ecosystem

On 16 September, the iconic grand steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York had all the signs of closing time: hot dog vendors were packing up for the day, visitors were taking their final selfies, and Museum security had informed the skateboarders to wrap up using the steps as a ramp. 

The Met was in fact preparing for a special after-hours occasion: the pre-opening reception of its exhibition ‘MANDALAS: Mapping The Buddhist Art of Tibet’ curated by Kurt Behrendt, the museum’s Associate Curator of South Asian Art. Anchoring the show is the installation ‘Biography of a Thought’, by 42-year-old Kathmandu-born artist Tenzing Rigdol.

As the world hunkered down in 2020 due to Covid, Rigdol spent the lockdowns traversing history, philosophy, Buddhist teachings and art, letting it all seep into the innermost corners of his mind and allowing it to shape what would be one of his largest and most important undertakings. 

Two years ago he was still working out his final processes in Kathmandu before putting acrylic on canvas, testing over 30 shades of blue. In his studio in Boudha, he had said: “I am finally happy with a couple of the colours, it is very important that I get it right.” 

Finally, earlier this year, the artworks arrived at The Met. In August, the artist posted an announcement of his upcoming exhibition on his social media platforms.

Upon entering The MET’s Gallery 963, the Robert Lehman Wing in an atrium, visitors have multiple vantage points for an overhead view of the exhibition. Awash in natural light from the soaring glass ceiling above, guests are greeted with a panoramic view of Rigdol’s Biography of a Thought.

It is bold in both scale and concept. The 21 canvases add up to nearly 95 sq m of painted work. An additional 100 sq m of handwoven Tibetan carpet is part of the installation, for which Rigdol collaborated with Mt Refuge as the fabricators. 

Rigdol’s 2014 body of work, ‘My World Is Your Blind Spot’, consisted of five 1 m panels using silk, Buddhist scriptures, photographs, and focused on the issue of self-immolation. In 2011, after covertly transporting over twenty tons of soil from Tibet to Dharamshala, India, he created a three-day site specific installation work titled Our Land, Our People so visitors could walk on Tibetan soil again and later take home small packets of it.

To enter this exhibition is to enter Tenzing Rigdol’s mind. It is a large mandala and the only way to to view it is to look at it from above or actually enter and walk through it.

Art came to Rigdol early in life after he was awarded at age six by Queen Aishwarya. His artwork were bought for carpet designs when he was still a young boy. As a teenager, he grew up admiring the works of contemporary Nepali artists. 

“I can’t begin to express the love and respect I have for Nepal’s artists,” he tells us in New York. “But Indra Pradhan holds a special place in my heart. The first art exhibition I ever went to was his.”

At age 15 in 1997, Rigdol actually won the Indra Pradhan Memorial Inter-School Painting Competition in Kathmandu. He earned a BFA at the University of Colorado Denver in art history of the world, but realised in college that there was so much to first learn about art in Tibet and Nepal.

Rigdol was using a book of Tibetan art for show and tell in class, when his professor asked him about some of the work. He was unable to satisfactorily answer them, and found this gap in his own  knowledge and skill unacceptable to himself. He returned to Kathmandu to the Tibetan Thangka Art School, and learnt about sand painting and butter sculpture at Shekar Chorten Monastery.

In the last two decades, Rigdol has emerged as one of the world’s top contemporary Tibetan artists and thinkers, helping redefine contemporary Tibetan art. He also mentored many of the movement’s well known artists early in their careers, connecting them with international representatives, curators and collectors alike. 

His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world and are in private and museum collections. In 2014, he became the first Tibetan artist whose ‘Pin drop silence: Eleven-headed Avalokiteshvara’ (Ink, pencil, acrylic, and pastel on paper) was added to the Permanent Collection of The MET. It was his layered and intricate work 233x125 cm. Last year the University of Colorado awarded Tenzing Rigdol an honorary doctorate.

Rigdol’s art is a seamless combination of the masterful skill of a thangka artist, the mind of a scholar, a philosophical provocateur, with the instinct and courage of a rebel and the fierce vision of a creative force. Even if one were to not dive into the depths of his art, the powerful visual aesthetics and hints of their deeper meaning can leave viewers impressed and overwhelmed. 

Biography Of A Thought marks an unprecedented historic moment for artists from Nepal and the Himalayan region and places Rigdol as one of the most important and thought provoking contemporary artists from Asia of this time.

At the pre-opening reception, Rigdol's mother Dolma Tsering wandered through her son's installation. "I knew it would be good," she exclaimed. "But this is beyond even my expectations."

MANDALAS: Mapping The Buddhist Art of Tibet

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Till 12 January, 2025

Watch artist Tenzing Rigdol discuss his installation Biography Of A Thought:  https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/videos/2024/9/rigdol-interview 

Overview from The MET
While drawing on Buddhist ideas, practices, and artistic formats seen in the surrounding galleries, Tenzing Rigdol’s installation presents our world from a secular perspective. Moving clockwise from left, paintings address the ecosystem and human behaviour, conflict and aggression, and virtue juxtaposed with the illusory world and the digital age. On the final wall, the waves quiet, and we are invited to consider our relationship to the whole. Lines running through the sky speak to the underlying structure of Tibetan Buddhist paintings, while clouds represent thoughts and the churning ocean emotion. The repeated figure of the artist, with a cloth-wrapped head symbolising the limits of his own understanding, guides us through the work. A carpet woven by hand, a tradition that Rigdol’s family participated in as refugees, leads to a composition at the atrium’s centre that explores interdependency.