The two video installations DREAMS and PALA AMALA deal with Tibetan bodies in landscape, or rather an absence of landscape as well as expressions of care and longing. These works are not resolutions, rather embracing of what cannot be controlled in our lives.

ACHALA, DANCING BOY, and SUMMER GRASS are sculptural works. In them, videos displayed on screens within small brass and jade containers contain scenes of everyday life as shared on the social media app WeChat between the artist’s relatives in Tibet and those in the US, allowing for mediated access to the autonomous region. The series was prompted by the 2020 ban on WeChat in the US, which effectively prevented the artist and his family from communicating with their relatives during that time and until the app’s reinstatement in August 2021.

In DREAMS, the artist’s parents—Tibetan exiles—are seen sleeping on a single mattress on the floor, akin to the one they slept on when they first immigrated to the West. The image of the pair embracing on a bed floating within an open, undefined environment—as if any place could be photoshopped around them—heightens the sense of displacement and uncertainty. The work features a soft blanket made in India that is found in many Tibetan homes of the diaspora. “This blanket was one of the things my mother brought with us when we immigrated to the US from India. In this work, I wanted to return to one of my earliest and fondest memories. I wanted to remember that time of innocence.” Tenzin Phuntsog

Production Tenzin Phuntsog, Andrea Monti. Production companies Plateaux Films (California, USA), Microscope Gallery (New York, USA). Director Tenzin Phuntsog. Cinematography Tenzin Phuntsog. Editing Tenzin Phuntsog. Sound design Tenzin Phuntsog. Sound Tenzin Phuntsog. Assistant director Jonathan Witz. Production manager Jonathan Witz. With Nawang Phuntsog (Pala), Tsekyi Dolma Phuntsog (Amala).

PALA AMALA (or “Father Mother” in the Tibetan language) is a two-channel video featuring the artist’s parents, who fled Tibet as children in the early 1960s. Phuntsog’s slow camera moves and deliberate framing capture his parents performing as themselves, as well as serving as vessels for a diaspora family. The reduced images communicate feelings around familial expressions of care, language, and identity. Memories of and longing for a lost homeland are expressed without words, as if hanging in the air, reflected through the gaze of subjects and the camera, unresolved. On a California beach, the father relives the moment he returned to Tibet for his first and only time in the 1990s, rubbing sand—in place of soil—over his hands and body.
PALA AMALA was filmed on the Pacific Coast, where Phuntsog’s family settled in 1995, and their home in suburban America.

Production Tenzin Phuntsog, Andrea Monti. Production companies Plateaux Films (California, USA), Microscope Gallery (New York, USA). Director Tenzin Phuntsog. Cinematography Tenzin Phuntsog. Editing Tenzin Phuntsog. Sound design Tenzin Phuntsog. Sound Tenzin Phuntsog. Assistant director Jonathan Witz. Production manager Jonathan Witz. With Nawang Phuntsog (Pala), Tsekyi Dolma Phuntsog (Amala).

ACHALA contains a personal message between the artist’s mother and her sister in Tibet. They discuss keeping in touch through pictures, which represents a safe form of exchange for their monitored communications.

Production Tenzin Phuntsog, Andrea Monti. Production companies Plateaux Films (California, USA), Microscope Gallery (New York, USA). Director Tenzin Phuntsog. Editing Tenzin Phuntsog. With Achala.

A joyful moment of a child dancing to a contemporary Tibetan song in a Tibetan dwelling. The boy, all the while making lively dance moves, looks straight at the camera—for which he is seemingly performing—humorously and charmingly.

Production Tenzin Phuntsog, Andrea Monti. Production companies Plateaux Films (California, USA), Microscope Gallery (New York, USA). Director Tenzin Phuntsog. Editing Tenzin Phuntsog.

A Yak herder shares a series of clips during their typical day on the sunny grasslands of Tibet, offering a rare glimpse of daily life shared between two family members that have been separated for over 40 years.

Production Tenzin Phuntsog, Andrea Monti. Production companies Plateaux Films (California, USA), Microscope Gallery (New York, USA). Director Tenzin Phuntsog. Editing Tenzin Phuntsog.

Tenzin Phuntsog is a Tibetan-American artist and filmmaker who works across moving image, film, and installation. His personal practice touches into themes of presence and belonging as well as landscape and language. He studied Media Arts at the University of California and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. His works have been exhibited and screened at renowned galleries, museums, and festivals including Videobrasil, São Paulo; IFFR Rotterdam; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Microscope Gallery, New York; and The Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

Films: 2010: Four Rivers (67 min.). 2014: A Singing Blade (15 min.). 2018: Rituals of Resistance (63 min.). 2019: The Day the Sun Died (17 min.). 2022: Dreams, Pala Amala (Father Mother), Achala, Dancing Boy, Summer Grass. 2023: Mother Tongue, Next Life.