The Bus Stops Here

Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now presents artworks by thirty-two contemporary artists, many from the Himalayan region and diaspora, juxtaposed with objects from the Rubin Museum’s collection. Co-curator Tsewang Lhamo interviewed artist Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee about his process creating a new work for this exhibition.

Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee: My works are important to me because of their subjects. Most of the time, I choose my family, my friends, and people I deal with on a daily basis as the main subjects.

For this show, I chose the local bus stand in New Delhi because I’ve been using that space for a very long time. This bus stand has become kind of my family in a way. So the characters in the painting, along with the materials, all come from my experience being on the bus.

There are lots of people here in this artwork, and it reflects the fact that India is the most populated country in the world. Delhi is one of the most dense cities in India. When I go to the bus station in the morning, which is the busiest time of day, people do not fit in the bus. So in the painting, there are characters that come out from the bus, sort of like a tower going up in the sky.

Some of the characters shown are Indian circus performers, musicians in bands who play instruments during marriage seasons, and sex workers, who are commonly seen at bus stations in India.

What this particular work means to me is that despite having your own country, culture, and religion, without understanding each other on a humanity level, I think we all are lonely and narrow-minded. Our differences shouldn’t act like a cage.

I normally paint with acrylic on a tarp. We call it drochak bureh (drochak means barley and bureh means sack). This material is important for me because when we were kids you could see these bags everywhere in our towns on broken windows to cover them, during construction, as garbage cans, and some people even made bath loofahs out of them. During college, canvas was so expensive for me, so I began to use this material.

I see it as a symbol of our refugee situation. My parents would say, “We are refugees. That’s why we are getting this.” The bags were filled with food supplies as aid, and they were given by the United States to Tibetan refugees back then. The ones you see now are quite different from the ones from back then, especially the ones in Delhi. But they also carry its role in a different way, used for different things.

I’m playing with three objects from the collection: the Monkey Mask, the Kang Ling leg bone trumpet, and the Garland Bearing Apsara wooden carving that the Rubin recently returned to Nepal. I saw it in the newspaper and thought it was very brave of the Rubin Museum to give it back to Nepal, so you can see its return in my work as well.

I use the Monkey Mask for my character because of Hanuman, who is very loyal to Ram. I want to show my loyalty to the Indian community, like Hanuman does to Ram. Indians are very kind to us. On top of that I use the Tibetan mask, which represents me. With the Kang Ling trumpet, it is a juxtaposition with the Indian band Baja instruments. The Kang Ling reminds us of emptiness and impermanence, and the band Baja is kind of materialistic and represents attachment, because it’s usually present in marriage ceremonies in India.

I normally stop and try to find humor in my work, and then I call my friends and talk about it. It somehow changes the way I see my work when I joke about it with my friends. From there, I am able to create new paths. Even my father says, when you are going through great misery or you are stuck somewhere, you should realize that there’s always humor in it. I hope my paintings can bring humor into peoples’ lives.  Making a full painting and letting it go by selling it and then making another one—that is part of the process for me.

Love. Without love there is no joy as a being. It makes you lonely. That’s the special thing about humans. We can love each other without any kind of boundaries about our culture and everything else.

Because of technology, I can see what other artists are doing and what galleries are showing new works. It helps a lot when seeking inspiration. Because we are able to communicate so easily now due to technology, it will be better for our art community, and art can better technology and community too.

When I was in school, I never liked to collaborate with people. I found it a disturbance when I needed personal space. I think in other places, even when you collaborate, there is still some personal space. But in India we don’t have any personal space.

Someday in the future, I want to collaborate with my senior artists. That inspiration came from Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat when they collaborated.