Witte de With | Center for Contemporary Art presents Paola Pivi. Tulkus 1880 to 2018, an exhibition on view 25 January–5 May 2013.
Witte de With is excited to unfurl her 2013 program with Tulkus 1880 to 2018, a mastodontic artwork and work in progress by Paola Pivi. Based on extensive international research and aimed at creating a complete collection of portraits and basic information on all the tulkus of the world—who in Tibetan Buddhism are the recognized reincarnations of previous Buddhist masters—from the beginning of photography until today, from all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, and from all the areas of the world where these religions are practiced, this growing survey has until now collected over 1100 photographic portraits. Manifesting in a stunning array of forms, from high-production color prints to inexpensive photocopied reproductions, and in scales ranging from pocket-size to large format, these images are the same ones commonly treasured in monasteries, hung in private households or shops, or collected by the faithful. Considered holy by the Buddhists, the photographs of the tulku are believed to have the same power as the tulku themselves.
Tulkus 1880 to 2018 uncharacteristically lays bare these objects of specific veneration within the confines of a religiously plural, and often secular art institution—an institution that conversely is not known for presenting nominally sacred objects to its audience, and is itself enshrined within a long history of aesthetic discourses that attempt to establish a ‘visual neutrality.’ Tulkus 1880 to 2018 is co-commissioned by Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. For more information and exhibition credits, please click here.
Concurrent Public Programs
On 2 February 2013, a transversal event joins together a set of thinkers so as to draw out just a few rich strands from the art and culture which bind Buddhist history. Curator Davide Quadrio will lead the audience through the visual narrative depicted in the 17th century Tibetan thangka, portraying Tsuglag Gyatso, the Third Pawo Rinpoche (c. 1567–1630). This painting—on loan from the Rubin Museum of Art, New York—references the origin of the tulku photographic portrait tradition and hangs in Witte de With’s galleries as a loadstone for the general exhibition. Expanding on the contemporary history of Buddhism in the West, artist Louwrien Wijers will in conversation, with art historian Arnisa Zeqo, trace early parallels between pre-Christian iconography and the Buddha’s image, punctuated by personal reflections on Wijers’s introduction of the 14th Dalai Lama to Joseph Beuys and the European art scene in the 1980s.
Between Seeing and Believing on 30 March 2013 will tackle a novel course and explore the faculty of imaging, both pictorially and descriptively, by focusing on how belief can be constructed through the process of envisioning. To this end, several scholars including Andrei Pop (Professor of Art History, University of Basel), Minou Schraven (Professor of Art History and Museum Studies, Amsterdam University College), Pascal Rousseau (Professor of Contemporary Art History, University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), and Fransesca Tarocco (Professor at New York University, Shanghai) present a short iconographic reading of a single image of their own choice respectively—collectively though, each of these images revolve around the idea of visions, be they found in dreams, hypnosis, hallucinations, representations of the afterlife, or other related themes.
Witte de With | Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam
The Netherlands
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www.wdw.nl