Lungta

Ausstellung XX. Revolution

Rohkunstbau, Kulturschloss Roskow, 2014

 

"Only Eva Castringius has worked with a real, ongoing revolution, namely, with the Sinicization of Tibet. In several hundred photographs from a long journey in 2013, setting out from Chengdu, Szechuan and traveling via Tibet to Nepal, she shows the ongoing, radical-revolutionary modernization of Tibet by the Chinese and the restrained resistance of the Tibetans. The photographs, printed on A4 tracing paper, are hung above head level on colorful canvases that span the room from the upper corners, much like the prayer banners of stupas. Outside of this arrangement, only one large color photograph is mounted in the window, showing exiled Tibetans in Nepal spinning wool in the traditional way. The photographs are arranged as short series, for example, of young pilgrims who travel sixty kilometers on foot and at times on their knees to Lhasa to whitewash the Potala Palace for the monks. (The Chinese want to destroy this drone city.) On their way they modern pilgrims: tourists. Other series show temples and monasteries, which contrast with the impoverished lives of the peasants; then the fantastic panorama of Mount Everest from the airplane and, as a contrast to the ruthless destruction of the landscape from mining, the building of railways and dams, and chemistry in a search for rare-earth minerals and coal. That is clearly what matters to Eva Castringius: bringing out in her photographs the contrast between radical industrialization and the restrained cultural protests of the Tibetans. Her work is called Lungta, or “Wind Horse,” like the Buddhist prayer banners, and is “a small contribution” to the new Lhakar resistance movement, that is, the white, auspicious Wednesday (and soul day of the Dalai Lama), on which the activists “dress festively, speak and eat only Tibetan, and go to temple." (Hermann Pfütze, Rohkunstbau XX, Revolution und Illusion, Schloß Roskow, 6.7. – 21.9.2014, in: Kunstforum Bd. 228, 8/9 2014.)