Ausgabe 1.2019 / Transkulturelle Perspektiven

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://edoc.hu-berlin.de/18452/20618

This special issue of Transcultural Perspectives investigates representations of Tibetan heritage, art and material culture in the Tibetan diaspora. (For more details, see Editorial)

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    2019-03-27Zeitschriftenartikel
    Editorial: Representing Tibet Abroad: Tibetan Heritage, Art and Material Culture
    Höfer, Regina; Höfer, Regina
    Editorial
  • Publication
    2019-03-27Zeitschriftenartikel
    World Systems Perspectives and Art: A Case Study of the Museum of Contemporary Tibetan Art in the Netherlands
    Braden, Laura E.A.; Oosterman, Naomi; Höfer, Regina
    When examining the evaluation of artworks from non-Western nations, research often focuses on the appropriation of value by those who live in culturally central countries over their peripherally located counterparts. Such expertise often translates to the “discovery” of art in peripheral nations. For example, Price (2001: p. 68) examines “the ‘anonymous’ world of Third World craftsmanship” where “Western observer’s discriminating eye is often treated as if it were the only means by which an ethnographic object could be elevated to the status of a work of art.” However, less work explores how non-Western actors exhibit and represent their country’s artwork within a Western context and to Western audiences. The present research uses a case study to explore the way Tibetan artists and curators have established a museum dedicated to Tibetan art in Northern Europe: the Museum of Contemporary Tibetan Art in Emmen, the Netherlands. The mission of this museum is to introduce and promote the “artistic, cultural and historical matters of Tibetan Art […] reflecting [the] adjustment of Tibetan Art and culture in the West.” This museum is the first in Europe to house and exhibit contemporary Tibetan artworks and officially opened in September 2017. Consequently, our research is the first to examine this museum and proffer analysis of the museum’s strategies for promoting their artwork. Drawing from a world systems perspective, the overall aim of the research is to provide insight into the representation of culturally peripheral, non-Western art in a culturally dominant, Western context.
  • Publication
    2019-03-27Zeitschriftenartikel
    ‘Tibetan Treasures’ of the Weltmuseum Wien: A First Critical Approach to René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Policy of Collecting
    Niebuhr, Uwe; Widorn, Verena; Höfer, Regina
    The Austrian tibetologist and ethnographer René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz purchased a significant part of the Tibetan collection at the Weltmuseum Wien during his three field trips to South Asia in the 1950s. Famous for his indispensable book Oracles and Demons of Tibet (1956), Nebesky-Wojkowitz started his studies at the University of Vienna right after World War II, at a time when a paradigm shift took place in the field of ethnology, bringing in a new historic-empirical orientation to the discipline. The initial phase of his first journey to Kalimpong between 1950 and 1953 was characterised by his membership in the expedition of Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark. Kalimpong (West Bengal) was a meeting place for numerous important researchers sharing diverse interests in Buddhism and the Tibetan culture. Although Nebesky-Wojkowitz never had the chance to enter Tibet, he became fascinated with Tibetan culture, religion and art. As one of the very few foreigners who travelled in the mountainous regions of the Eastern Himalayas he came in direct contact with the local population and Tibetan refugees, collecting large numbers of objects and artefacts of ethnological, ritual and art historical relevance. This essay is the first critical analysis of Nebesky-Wojkowitz's method of collecting Tibetan objects and data (outside of Tibet).
  • Publication
    2019-03-27Zeitschriftenartikel
    The Library of Tibetan Works and Archives: Diaspora, Memory, and Movement
    Saikia, Monalisha; Höfer, Regina
    This study proposes to examine the politics of memory, diaspora, and the Tibetan Movement as articulated in the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA), Dharamsala (India) – a symbol of defiance in refuge. Investigating the diasporic reclamation of identity of the Tibetans in exile, a Cultural Memory Studies framework unveils a nuanced yet structured power dynamics in the institution of a library archiving the history, language and culture of a homeland now usurped by imperial dominance. The LTWA is a performative actor of cultural memory. In its valorisation of primarily the religious, it invites participation of the secular as visitor, witness and ritual practice, overlapping boundaries of ideology, hegemony, culture, and consumption. It becomes an agency to sustain the cause of the Tibetan Movement for a lost homeland, becoming a collecting entity of the literary, socio-cultural, and political. The imposing structure and design of LTWA set against the towering mountains that separate India from Tibet, and its distinct array of colours, resembling that found commonly in Tibet, call for attention to the message it evokes – a presence which cannot be overlooked. Its material reality is at once surpassed by its ambivalent intangibility – an assertion as well as a resistance. It beckons not to an unproblematic past and sends a cautionary warning to the outsider – cultural identity is not alienation but a process of exchange. Citizenship is not always a given; it is susceptible to the vicissitudes of circumstances. What seems like an apolitical archive and display is a fraught space very much a cynosure of the geopolitics of today. Alternative narratives are set into relief in the construct of the LTWA. Tourism, consumerism, commodification, and exoticisation are integral parts of the LTWA even as it stands testimony to the preservation of a culture unique to the world.