Post date: Jul 05, 2013 12:53:30 PM
A Dutch artist marks the Dalai Lama's birthday by compiling a portrait of the spiritual leader from paintings made by Chinese artists oblivious to the end product of their work.
THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS (JULY 5, 2013) (REUTERS) - Dutch artist Airo Caravan along with a dozen Tibetan activists on Friday (July 5) presented the Chinese embassy in The Hague with a birthday cake and a portrait of the Dalai Lama made from sixteen individually unrecognizable pieces to mark the exiled spiritual leader's birthday which is on July 6.
The activists cut the cake outside the embassy after a security guard closed the doors, denying access to the compound.Caravan cut up a portrait of the Dalai Lama into sixteen unrecognizable pieces and asked various Chinese painters to reproduce the individual squares, without telling them what they were actually painting.
"Well, the picture of the Dalai Lama is forbidden in China, so I cut the portrait of the Dalai Lama in sixteen small pieces and I rotated some of the pictures like this, so people wouldn't recognize it. And I gave them names like "blue sky", "mango", "hills", "grandpa", "curtains", etc. So when I got it back, well I just turned it around again and hang it on," Caravan told Reuters Television.
The artist then assembled the pieces and her final work is currently on display inAmsterdam's CNCPT gallery.
Beijing considers the Dalai Lama, who fled China in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, a violent separatist. The Dalai Lama, who is based in India, says he is merely seeking greater autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.
Chinese officials lifted a 17-year old ban on Tibetan monks displaying photographs of the Dalai Lama at a prominent monastery, a rights group said last week, an unexpected policy shift which could ease tensions in the restive region.