On a quiet Sunday afternoon, I spent my time talking to Passang Tobgay, at VAST. VAST is Bhutan’s first and major art studio and center. For nearly a month now, Passang’s solo exhibition Long For The Pure Land, has been on display, for free.
Passang trained at the Zorig Chusum and recently returned from the Netherlands after earning a degree in Fine Arts. After graduation he worked there, where a local newspaper rated one of his exhibitions 5/5.
It’s only been two years since Passang returned to Bhutan, but fifteen years since he went to his home town of Trashigang, where his parents still live and where his first creation lies. Passang told me that he was about eight or nine years old, when he got curious about art. Because his father wouldn’t buy him paper, the walls at his home became his canvas. Three decades later, he needn’t worry about that anymore. His art has travelled across continents- Singapore, Italy, Germany, and Taiwan, to name a few, with sales in the U.S. Japan is the only East Asian country his art hasn’t reached yet.
After observing Passang’s art, which has a strong religious influence, I initially suspected he had once been a Buddhist monk. However, while that wasn’t the case, he shared that his time at the Zorig Chusum, unlike today, wasn’t “modern.” Monastic education was also part of the training. Students learnt how to conduct rituals and read the sutras, text used during rituals.
During our talk, which included a tour of the exhibition, words like “experiment,” and “support,” showed up. Pieces like the 21 Tara painting were put up as a support to the main exhibition. Another piece featuring a single lotus was included specifically for Bhutanese audiences, as the wall looked empty without it.
Passang also shared that he felt Bhutanese people didn’t experiment enough and were more interested in generating quick wealth. I felt some guilt at the statement. As I once had blind ambitions to study Writing at a top U.S. university. But looking back, that was the seed of my experimentation that Passang kept bringing up. He said that the exhibition– Long For The Pure Land, was also an experiment.
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