Courtesy of Lama Tashi Norbu
Join us in the museum for an after-hours viewing of Across Shared Waters from 5 to 5:30. Then, starting at 5:30 p.m., Lama Tashi Norbu, an artist featured in the show, will work with a participant from our community to design a tattoo for them based on Tibetan astrology, create their personal buddhist mantra, and, during a live performance, chant the mantra for the participant as he tattoos the design on their body in the museum to empower their lives for eons.
Local musicians will improvise alongside the artist. This project would not have been possible without the support of Alexis Rosasco, a local artist and owner of North Adams tattoo shop AR Designs Fine Art & Tattoo.
Please follow this link to apply to be the participant in this performance. You can also use the form to indicate that you would like to perform music at the event.
Norbu also will lead drop-in meditation sessions in the galleries from 5 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25, and Wednesday, April 26.
About the artist
Lama Tashi Norbu was born in Bhutan. In his first years, he was greatly influenced by his grandparents, who led very spiritual lives. His grandfather told him that he would become a Lhabri, someone who paints gods and goddesses. Lama Tashi also witnessed as a child in Bhutan his grandfather go into trance and travel into another dimension while meditating and bringing messages, like Buddhist mystics, who have taken off in joyful flight. He was known for sacred beings who work in the “Bardo,” the intermediate state after death and before rebirth. His grandmother, who was a female lama, is believed to have transformed into a rainbow body, after dying in a meditation posture, and slowly attaining para nirvana.
This all left a lifelong impression on Lama Tashi, who received his education at the schools of the Dalai Lama, where he became a traditional Thangka painter and ordained as a monk. He is educated in European western fine arts in Belgium and The Netherlands. Lama Tashi became an accomplished artist who never lost his spiritual Buddhist upbringing. After numerous world travels, where his art was exhibited in prestigious world museums and galleries, he founded the Museum of Contemporary Tibetan Art in the Netherlands, which is the only museum in the world dedicated to Tibetan art and is recognized by the Dutch government and registered as one of the National Museums of the Netherlands.
Lama Tashi now combines art, meditation, and Buddhist teachings, and he creates Tibetan Sand Mandalas on his many world tours. Lama Tashi is also playing with some of the greatest musicians of the world, such as Earth, Wind and Fire, and he has performed in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York City.