VAST: Bhutan an Exploration on Contemporary Art

VAST, Volunteer Artists’ Studio
Location: Thimpu, Bhutan (capital)
Interview with: Kama Wangdi, founder of VAST
by Elena Valussi

Between the 6-12 September I visited Bhutan to attend a conference on the History of Traditional Asian Medicines. Since I have always been interested in Asian Art, I also wanted to find out about art in Bhutan, and especially what was the situation of Contemporary art. Prior to my visit, I therefore attempted to find out about Contemporary art in Bhutan; however, I could only find the website for VAST, an organization of volunteer artists promoting contemporary art among Bhutanese youth. I had started initial contact with the founder of VAST, Kama Wangdi, because I knew I wanted to interview him about his artistic practice in Bhutan, the situation of contemporary art in Bhutan and his plans for future art projects.

Since Bhutan is a small country (the size of Switzerland) and its population is only 600,000 people, it is not surprising that there would be so little in terms of contemporary art. However, Bhutan has a long history of traditional Buddhist art, which has been recognized in the West by collectors and art galleries, most recently by the exhibition The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, organized in 2009 by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and which traveled to San Francisco later that year, and to Switzerland, Germany and Paris in 2010. Traditional art is what is mostly supported by the Bhutanese government, in Bhutan and abroad.

Once I arrived in the capital of Bhutan (Thimpu) I quickly contacted Mr. Kama Wangdi, who took me to his gallery and studio. This is the description of our meeting.

What is VAST?

Voluntary Artists’ Studio, Thimphu, popularly known as VAST was set up in 1998 by a group of professional artists as a non profitable and non governmental organization. This informal organization was set up with the sole aim of providing an opportunity to the Bhutanese youth to participate and develop their potential talents as well as share social responsibilities through artistic explorations and other socially useful and productive work. Its primary objective is to provide potential vocational skills and alternative positive use of free time and facilitate participation in the national and international art realm.

VAST Mission
1) To promote the importance and the value of visual art.
2) To guide and assist young artists to explore their full potential.
3) To nurture the creative talents of the Bhutanese youth.
4) To provide potential vocational skill exploration through exposure and participation in art.
5) To spread social awareness through art. To promote the importance of our rich culture and tradition through art. To provide an alternative positive use of free time in a productive manner.
6) To facilitate participation in national, regional and international art realm.
Additionally, this is what is listed under VAST Activities:
7) Conducts weekend classes on basic drawing, sketching, water-colouring, oil painting, computer aided designing, traditional painting techniques, etc.
8) Designs and implements projects to promote culture, health, hygiene and environment. These projects are designed using new materials and techniques, providing on-the-job training to the students.
9) Organizes art talks, art camps and field trips to relevant institutions.
10) Invites internationally acclaimed artists to conduct art classes and exchange ideas, when they are in Bhutan on vacation.
11) Organizes regular exhibitions and art shows.

The website also lists 4 people responsible for VAST: Mr. Wangdi, Mr. Kuenga, Mr. Dorji and Mr. Kinga Wangchuck. Each of these people has a short introduction as well as a gallery of their artwork on the website. Mr. Wangdi told me that there are about 15 volunteer artists involved in teaching and managing VAST. Of these, three are founders and three are managers. To learn more about the members of VAST see here.

Rationale

On his personal page on the website, this is one of Kama’s quotes:

As the torch-bearer of Contemporary Art in Bhutan, I am fully engaged in dedicating myself to the issue of Bhutanese contemporary art and helping the youth of Bhutan. With full support and dedication from my students and fellow artists we would like to take the Bhutanese art to new heights without compromising our age old traditional art.

Mr. Wangdi discussed with me the reasons that led him to found VAST. Mr. Wangdi himself was trained as a traditional artist, and then as a graphic designer, both in Bhutan and in England. He has been abroad several times to represent Bhutan at international art fairs; he has also participated as an independent artist, in international contemporary art shows.

Kama says that the Bhutanese government is very supportive of artists and art education in general. Artists are trained in traditional arts, to fulfill the large demand for traditional Buddhist paintings for temples and private homes; that is how Kama himself was trained in his youth. More recently, many artists are trained as graphic designers, with the goal of contributing to the growing market for advertisement, public and private. Kama himself was supported by the Bhutanese Government to go to Kent in England to train as a graphic designer, and he practiced in the field of graphic design for many years after his return to Bhutan.

However, says Mr. Wangdi, there is little encouragement on the part of the government of artists who do not want to go into traditional painting or into graphic design, but still want to pursue an artistic career. The field of contemporary art is just opening up in Bhutan, and VAST is at the forefront of this movement. The idea behind the founding of VAST was thus to give a space to artists for exchange and experimentation outside the box of traditional art forms; it was also intended to give youth the possibility of experiencing the process of art, because through art, says Mr. Wangdi, one can better understand life. He wanted to give a space to artists and students outside the traditional or commercial artistic framework. In the past 10 years Vast had definitely opened up the conversation about the meaning of art and especially about contemporary art in Bhutan.

Activities

My conversation with Kama covered the specifics of the activities that go on at VAST. There are regular weekend classes for young people on: basic drawing, color, acrylic, oil painting classes, photography classes, graphic design, sculpture and printing classes. Occasional workshops teach the students how to use found objects in their art, watercolor, collage, photography, and traditional Bhutanese Buddhist art. They are planning to start training students in video art. The studio has about 70 regular school age students.

VAST is very socially involved, not only through art outreach, but also through projects that help the environment, the poor and the young. One such artistic project is ongoing now, called Young zoom on garbage is a Digital Photography and Garbage Awareness Workshop directed at young photographers.

The website quotes: YOUNG ZOOM on Garbage is an initiative taken by VAST Bhutan to engage young people to tackle some of the issues of garbage and ultimately contribute to the society through artistic endeavors. The workshop will be conducted in 3 to 4 stages in an informal way by professionals such as artists, photographers, environmentalist and concern people from RGOB. The young participants will be provided with enough information, guidance, artistic approaches both in basic digital photographic techniques and ABC (Advocacy Behavioral Change) towards Garbage issue in Thimphu. They will see through their camera and embrace the alarming issue and challenges in dealing with the NGP (National Garbage Problem). The result of their understanding and findings will be expressed and captured through their cameras which will be shared in form of exhibitions/awareness campaign and pictorial book with facts, findings and views for the mass.

Another socially engaged project is the Rice Bank project, which aims at providing rice banks to the families of farmers who, for different reasons, do not produce enough rice to feed themselves, and have to buy rice from other villages at a high rate of interest. This project aims at breaking the vicious circle of debt involving the purchase of rice, a prime survival necessity. Out of this project also came the Build a house project, wherein VAST volunteers will raise the money to build homes for extremely impoverished farmers.

Another interesting project is the Make a wish project; in their own words, this project is “designed to link young people to older people from rural areas and provide a platform to regenerate the lost connection between urban youth and rural old people by the young serving the old, which is an age old Bhutanese tradition that is slowly dying out.” VAST volunteers asked older people from Kabji villages to make a wish; their wish was to visit a very sacred religious site in the East of Bhutan, a site they were never able to visit. VAST volunteers raised the money and accompanied the senior citizens on the trip.

Thus the desire of VAST artists and volunteers is not only to empower youth through art, but also to restore and maintain the basic social structure of Bhutan through projects that enhance awareness of social problems like poverty, hunger, pollution as well as spiritual deprivation. In this way, says Kama, the artists themselves find a deeper dimension within themselves and are better able to express themselves in their art. You can learn more about these projects by visiting their website here.

Because of this strong engagement in the social fabric of Bhutan on all sorts of levels, paired with a genuine commitment to artistic expression, I believe that VAST is a very interesting and innovative experiment.

Other more artistic endeavors have been an annual exhibition, or contemporary art festival.

This art festival happens in the central square of Thimpu and includes performing arts, street arts, and singing. Last year the festival was the 10th anniversary of VAST and the theme was the dragon, a very powerful and sacred symbol for Bhutan. Mr. Wangdi says that there have been no restrictions placed by the Bhutanese government onto these public exhibitions and no censoring. For example, last year’s exhibition, their 10th anniversary exhibition, had the dragon as a central theme. The dragon is the sacred symbol of Bhutan, and when a dragon was made out of garbage, VAST artists drew sharp criticism from other Bhutanese people, but there was no government involvement in censoring or limiting the freedom of the artists to express themselves.

The theme of garbage and garbage disposal is the theme of this year’s festival. The ongoing project described on the website, the Digital Photography and Garbage Awareness Workshop 2009, is the framework that will lead to the production of the art for the art festival.

VAST has been sponsoring several other exhibitions and activities apart from their classes, their outreach projects and their annual exhibits. These projects include film festivals, print making workshops and concerts.