Ding Wei, Vice Minister of Ministry of Culture of China, delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of Nepal-China Thangka Exhibition on Sept 23, 2014. [Photo/chinaculture.org Yang Qi]

 

Second Nepal Cultural Festival: Nepal-China Thangka Exhibition kicked off in Beijing on September 23, 2014.

Around 50 pieces of Thangka paintings are being exhibited at the Nepal-China Arts Exhibition. The culture festival is a good opportunity to promote Nepalese culture and Buddhism to China on people-to-people level. The art exhibition will run from September 23 to 27 in the exhibition hall of Capital Library and then it will move to Foshan, south China’s Guangdong province, for 10 days before ending in Lhasa, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

The exhibition is being hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism & Civil Aviation of Nepal, Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and Embassy of Nepal in China.

Thangka painting

Thangka painting is closely linked with Tibetan art and has assimilated influences from indigenous Tibetan, Indian and Chinese traditional painting. With the popularity of Tibetan Thangka growing in recent years, Nepal learned more from Tibetan style while keeping its own style intact. Newari style of “Beri” is described as deep detailing to create dimensional effects on each thangka. On these thangka the ordinary sense of vision becomes a laboratory in which we can directly watch two flat dimensions magically become three.

Though mainly steeped in Buddhist motifs particularly in the northern highlands of Nepal, the Nepali Thangka also embraces Hindu and tantric motifs and their syncretism with Buddhist motifs.