Publication Date

8-21-2025

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Art and Art History

Keywords

Tenzing Rigdol, Mandala, Immersive art, Contemporary art, Tibetan art, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abstract

In 2024, artist Tenzing Rigdol created an installation - titled Biography of a Thought - spanning the entirety of the atrium in the Robert Lehman wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His larger-than-life mandala included twenty painted panels on four walls, a central podium with a panel on top, and carpets on the floor mirroring parts of the painted shapes on the walls. Complete with bright sunlight streaming from the above skylight, the room transformed into a modern mandala - a walkable, meditative, transformative space. Even with its multiple traditional Tibetan Buddhist components and organisational structure, many of the iconographies within the work engage in broader conversations that transcend their religious origins; the Buddhist mandalas, ritual implements, and deities are transformed by the artist, sometimes by manipulating their traditional renderings, other times by their juxtapositions with unexpected objects or scenes. Biography of a Thought thus embraces a dialogue between a range of topics: environmental concerns, social justice, violence, and human communications emerge as issues of universal concern. This essay has two goals: to reiterate the importance of space and place in the museum, highlighting the immersive work as a participatory event; and to interpret Rigdol's mandala as an exemplary contemporary artwork employing sacred imagery for secular statements.

Copyright Date

8-21-2025

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Rights Holder

Sarah Magnatta

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

13 pgs

File Size

2.5 MB

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the Author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Magnatta, S. (2025). Tenzing Rigdol’s Biography of a Thought: A Mandala in the Heart of the Met, Wasafiri, (40)3, 46-58. https://doi.org/10.1080/02690055.2025.2497648

Publication Title

Wasafiri

Volume

40

Issue

3

First Page

46

Last Page

58

ISSN

1747-1508

Download



Share

COinS