“In-Between Dreams”

Introduction

Pema Tshering (TINTIN) is an artist who lives and works in Bhutan and draws on the rich Buddhist visual culture of his land and belief systems. The work presented in this exhibition was created from 2023 to 2025 and represents his personal visual interpretations of the fundamental Tibetan Buddhist teachings and practices found in texts popularly translated as the “Tibetan Book of the Dead.” The teachings focus on Bardo, meaning “intermediate state,” and instruct on how one’s awareness progresses from one life to the next. 

However, these teachings are meant to guide a practitioner not only during the passage from one life to rebirth, but during the experience of life itself, as well as in dreams, for according to Buddhists, the reality and life with all the happiness and suffering are but an illusion.

Pema Tshering’s (TINTIN’s) paintings attract the viewer by his skillful and careful application of pigments, deliberate choice of colors, intriguing forms, and revealing titles. It is possible to read into the paintings even before fully knowing the artist’s intent or conceptual framework expressed in the images that comprise a particular work. 

Each viewer’s perceptions, expectations, and visual associations inform and always affect how one perceives and relates to art. 

This may be especially true for Pema Tshering’s work, because he is using traditional painting techniques, symbolic elements of iconography, composition and color, as well as the recognizable form of Tibetan Buddhist hanging scrolls called thangka. At the same time, he is expanding the iconographic forms and rules, subverting hierarchies of traditional compositions, and constructing new personal connotations he shares with the audience. He is inviting the viewers to look into the seemingly familiar and to get through to a new meaningful encounter. 

Reading into

For people acquainted with Tibetan and Bhutanese religious artforms, their expectations to know what they are looking at is often challenged when encountering Tintin’s work.  Such viewers, me included, ultimately require a bit more work on their part to look into what they are seeing.  

I have found that people can extract quite a range of meanings from one and the same of Tintin’s artwork. One in particular comes to mind, the “Objective Happiness,” an installation included in the “Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now” exhibition at the Rubin Museum in 2024. The three slanted and seemingly randomly placed pillars extending from floor to ceiling were wrapped in canvases traditionally painted with dragon images. They evoked but contrasted with straight and regularly spaced pillars found in Buddhist temples. The artist’s commentary on the work, referencing Buddhist sensibilities and Bhutan’s specific “Gross National Happiness” policy, explained that individual intentions and strive for happiness are usually different from one person to another, and even if these pillars⎯each representing a subjective search for happiness⎯are not perfect and straight, the fact does not diminish each pillar’s strengths or the validity of individual’s wish and intention to be happy. 

One viewer’s interpretation of the installation, evidently conditioned by their own familiarity with Tibetan Buddhist culture, assumed that the artist was commenting on the state of Buddhism in Tibet, with pillars of the temples crumbling and so on, while also supposing that the dragons were Chinese. Admittedly, the viewer did not read the accompanying label text, nor watched the artist’s video about the work. Their reaction ultimately revealed their own expectations, conflating Tibetan and Bhutanese art, cultures, and sensibilities. (As a side note, Bhutan is a country known as Drug, meaning dragon and is often referred to as the Land of the Dragon). However, the impact of the installation for the viewer was quite powerful despite their missing the uniqueness of the artist’s intent and reading into what they were seeing.

In this brief essay, while being aware of a similar possibility of drifting into my own perceptions, I attempt to frame and comment on Perma Tshering’s visual symbolism, technique and distinct characteristics by focusing on select works on view in the exhibition.

Looking in

Pema Tshering does both reading into and looking into the vast and important Buddhist teachings about the intermediate state between death and rebirth known as Bardo. Popularized outside of traditional Buddhist circles, Bardo teachings and practices are described in the texts commonly translated as the “Tibetan Book of the Dead.” These teachings are actually not only about dying but about living, and also about dreaming, which this exhibition’s title references. 

The artist imagines specific stages described in the texts and instructions, particularly the processes of dissolution of elements that comprise one’s body and consciousness during the intermediate states of being, whether transitioning from death to another existence or the dream state. 

In the series of paintings “Light and Nature,” Pema Tshering imbues each painting with his personal interpretation of the “Bardo of Luminous Light” through the use of luminous pigments against darker backgrounds that fill the expanse of his canvasses, using colors of the pigments to denote symbolism of the elements, and his often-inverse compositions to indicate transitions and transformations. 

In the “Luminous Light,” white orbs scattered like stars of consciousness intermingle with golden yellow spheres of earth element and burst forth in the upper expanse of the painting. In the lower center of the canvas is an upside-down human figure, almost transparent, writhed in abstracted flame-like red robes, with hands displaying a symbolic gesture (mudra) of concentration, one raised and one resting in their lap. Surprisingly, the head of the figure is not human but that of a mythical creature with open maw. This may be a tiger’s or another fierce creature’s head. It is attached to the shoulders in reverse to what the head’s orientation should be. 

(This wrathful face reminds me of the Lord of Death, Yama’s images, found in traditional Buddhist depictions of the Wheel of Existence, in which he grasps the whole of existence in his maw and hands. Those images quite literally illustrate that all of existence in its numerous and diverse forms is subject to death and rebirth.) 

As if driven by circular winds, strange shapes of warm-yellow-splotches and wave-like, striped-brown patterns evoke abstracted elemental forms that dance around the head. A cosmically dark sky, symbolic of the vastness of space, serves as the background to this burst through and emergence of the innate state of existence, or luminous light.

The viewers will undoubtedly be drawn to look into the paintings to discern pictorial techniques and details that may lay hidden until careful observation on their part. Although the visual impact of the images rests largely on the richness of colors, the careful implementation of the pigments, and intriguing compositions, to discover their “content” for me is the most rewarding part.

Getting through

The process of experiencing the intermediate state, the bardo, ultimately leads to getting through to the other end. In other words, the physical components of one’s body come to an end or dissolve, and while the dissolutions of the elements (earth, water, fire, and air) proceed in a specific sequence, one’s consciousness can be aware of these processes. This is an opportunity for the subtle mind in the Bardo to use this awareness and get through to its own natural state, to achieve liberation from form, rebirth, or from becoming embodied. However, this is a challenging task. Most people are not trained to be so aware and become overwhelmed by the emotional and karmic propensities that drive their consciousness to be reborn.

It is intriguing that in the series “Dissolution of Elements” Pema Tshering uses a specific form to frame and express the dissolution of the physical form. 

To mount these paintings, the artist employed a traditional format of silk brocades which usually frame hanging scrolls (thangka). His silk mounts follow specified proportions, shape, and have traditional inner borders around the paintings. The brocade mounts even include white veils (bunched at the top) traditionally used to cover thangkas for protection from elements, flies, incense smoke, etc., and wooden dowels, which keep the painting stretched flat. The color of each “thangka’s” brocade mount represents an element which is being dissolved in the process these paintings reference. He uses brown brocade to indicate the earth element in the “Tsa Tsa,” blue for the water element in the “Thirst,” pale mauve for the “Blood Fireflies,” and rich red to reflect a red glow visible in the wind (similar to burning butter lamps) for the “Breadth of Life.”

It is also telling that the paintings themselves are NOT constrained by the formal rectangles of their borders and spill out onto their silk frames. It’s hard not to read into this deliberate choice that in each instance of the elemental dissolution, the awareness is getting through. 

The “Bardo-transit,” another painting that reinforces the idea of transit, expresses numerous possibilities that open up during the intermediate state between death and rebirth. The artist’s vision of it literally shows various guises that can be assumed in this confusing but energetic process. The idea of the illusory nature of these appearances is supported by the images of the Sun and the Moon depicted as if reflected in water. The artist uses this motif in another painting, the “Life’s Illusion,” there focusing on the Moon’s reflection.

In the “Cosmic Dance,” Pema Tshering continues to draw on his own experiences, imagination, personal, and cultural symbolism. He also seems to tap into the archetypal and universal notion of a circle dance. This dance is among the most ancient dance configurations found in many cultures across the globe and symbolizes being together, connections, as well as the celebration of life. The painting brings to mind the famous “Dance” by Henri Matiss which also expresses the sense of joy and freedom. For Pema Tshering, the circle and the beings that comprise it reference the Buddhist mandala as a representation of the universe, and more personally, living connections through generations.  

In his paintings “Samsara,” “Life’s Illusion,” “Breath of Luminosity,” and “Luminous Interdependence,” the artist also addresses more fundamental Buddhist notions of the nature of existence and perception of reality. 

The notion of reality being an illusion dependent on our own perception is distinctly articulated in “Life’s Illusion,” which interprets a known Buddhist metaphor of seeing a reflection of the Moon in water. We may understand that the image of the Moon in water is illusory and transient, but we can also realize that for the reflection to appear, it depends on specific conditions⎯: the clear sky, the Moon, and the calm water. So is what we think of as reality; it is dependent on our perceptions and affected by various factors.

Finally, I find the piece titled “Hold on” to decisively reinforce the themes of the exhibition. From the literal representation of a pillow, which one uses when asleep and dreaming, to the implied softness of it, which offers comfort, and the rendering of grasping and holding on to it, which implies attachment as well as effort on the part of an imaginary human figure with the head of the mythical bird Garuda. The viewer is invited to consider whether to hold on to something comforting, or get through, or get free.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong reading of these works, and as the case with many artists’ intentions, the viewers’ are encouraged to engage with the art and find what is meaningful to them. It has been a stimulating journey for me to navigate through Tintin’s recent and diverse in form creations, and to look at these pieces with you, the visitors.

— Elena Pakhoutova
(Senior Curator of Himalayan Art, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A)