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Illustrated Stories
30th July - 30th September
Tashi Namgail
About the Exhibition
A witty bride, an evil witch, a frog who can speak, a much-feared ogre, a thief and a swindler … these are some of the characters depicted in the book ‘Tibetan Folktales’. Echoes of these stories are also heard in Ladakh. Both regions are rich in oral literature, their landscapes reveal tales of flood myths, spirits that reside in rocks, gods that take human form, witches that fly around at night on broomsticks fashioned from the house’s main pillar, beautiful women that entice you only to discover that they are demons in disguise with their entrails visible from the back, a dwarf that brings one prosperity if you capture his hat and walking stick. Huddled around the stove on long, cold winter evenings, households would be regaled by stories, sometimes related by elders at other times by professional storytellers.
Tibetan Folktales is part of that on-going engagement with stories from the Himalayan region. This collection of stories was first translated by Tibetan anthropologist Norbu Chophel. He collected these stories in the 1970s and 1980s with the aim of documenting Tibet’s vast and important oral tradition that was gradually being forgotten. He transcribed the stories into English, and they were first published in 1989 by the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives in Dharamsala.
The book which has Tashi Namgial’s illustrations was brought out by the Danish Tibetan Cultural Society; the translations were done by Jens Kornerup Walter.
About the Artist
Tashi Namgial is from Skurbuchan village in lower Ladakh. He has completed a BA in Fine Arts from College of Art, New Delhi, followed by a MA in Fine Arts from Banaras Hindu University. Tashi has exhibited widely, both in Ladakh and in other parts of India.
Much of Tashi’s work has focused on oral stories, songs and folklore. Drawing inspiration from the spoken or written word, sometimes fantastical, at other times historical, he has created visual imagery to depict various narratives. Inspired by these often-imaginary worlds, he follows a process that gradually unfolds the stories into a visual form that is created through his art. Often Tashi gets the scenes enacted before he begins execution of the work, photographing them as a reference for his paintings. Setting characters against the landscape, his works also focus on details of local architecture, dress, cuisine, flora, birds and wildlife. His understanding of these is reflected in his artistic practice as he brings together both cultural and historical practices in his art works.
The works Tashi Namgial has created for Tibetan Folktales converge the practices of storytelling, photography, performance, and painting. Using the imaginative reconstruction of translation, Tashi eventually inspires the search for a fantastical realism amongst the ordinary.
