Camera Oscura is a series of seventeen portraits of Tibetans, painted from a selection of photographs taken in Kangding, a village in the Tibetan province of Sichuan.
The portraits are done freehand with black spray paint on the white of the canvas.
I was invited to participate in an artist residency during May 2017, in Chengdu. It was difficult to leave the residency without notifying the local police, but I still managed a ten-day escape into the Tibetan region, where artist, business, NGO, and journalist visas are extremely controlled.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the One Road, One Belt plan — an international economic development initiative intended to return China to its golden age, which includes opening a Silk Road 2.0. Chengdu (the fifth most developed city in China) is deeply involved in this organisation. Sichuan and Tibet will be crossed by a railway and a motorway linking Poland to Beijing. This route, spanning half the globe, will cut through the Himalayas at mid-elevation. The city of Chengdu is home to 9.2 million inhabitants, yet remains isolated. It attempts to open itself to international culture and tourism, with the difficulty of juxtaposing this with the heavy control of local authorities.
The first Tibetan village, though only a few kilometres away, is still difficult to reach via winding roads plagued by constant landslides. But the new road will run along the mountainsides to deliver the many expected foreign tourists. For now, locals see very few Westerners. Children cried in surprise at the sight of my beard, and some adults remain wary or curious.
What tourists will not see is that we are in a context of Sinicization of Tibet. Rebellious Tibetans have, even recently, been victims of government reprisals. Locals are pushed out of their villages. Their homes are destroyed and replaced by more "Chinese-friendly" houses. Nomads retreat higher into the mountains. Young Tibetans are offered the hardest jobs; often discouraged, they risk falling into delinquency. Han Chinese from central and eastern China are called to colonise and contribute to China's expansion. Bön temples and frescoes are replaced by Chinese art, and spiritual leaders sympathetic to Chinese festivals and beliefs are placed in positions of authority.
Surveillance cameras dress every street corner — and even the fields, where they watch over farmers learning to smile at the lenses of the newcomers, of whom I am, ultimately, one of the first representatives.
Saffron turned silk / For a long time already / Sketches the moribund / Under the iris of cameras
Living in the Himalayas / Faces will suffer / From the tireless march / Of a sandy emperor
Goodbye, Bön, Kala / Goodbye wise thoughts / Tumult and movement / Are the new masters sovereign
Which greet the nonchalant / Travellers from everywhere
Blurred child's dreams / By corrupted adults
The Camera Oscura is the darkroom of the camera — the one that freezes the portraits of a certain people and their customs, destined to disappear in this momentum that seems almost impossible to stop. It is also my Bangkok studio where I develop my portraits, already inscribed in a past — a childhood dream fulfilled yet steeped in nostalgia.
I do not oppose Chinese culture, of course, which is equally ancient, rich, and fascinating. But every civilisation, in its efforts, generates a share of darkness that must nonetheless be brought to light, at the risk of letting another human treasure vanish.
Back in Chengdu, a friend shared her opinion. She obviously believes that China acts for the benefit of Tibet, and that the opposition is encouraged by American interference in a kind of East-West cold war. It is hard to contradict her, because that is also true. But in this march toward progress, it is the ancient peoples and their culture that disappear.
This is what I collect. My portraits are the dust of what humanity loses: a culture.