Passang Tobgay

Born 1984, From Trashigang

I studied traditional Bhutanese painting from 2001 to 2006 at National Institute of Traditional Arts & Crafts in Thimphu. After graduation, I worked as a thangka artist and as an instructor at Choki Traditional Art School. I moved to Amsterdam in 2010 to study fine art at Gerrit Rietveld Academy. In 2021, I returned to Bhutan and am now working with VAST Bhutan. Since 2010, I have moved away from the traditional thangka painting practice, attempting to merge the gap between sacred and secular, iconic and ordinary, and past history and contemporary. I take inspiration from classical Bhutanese paintings and manipulate their form to create somewhat abstract forms that carry over this sense of basic goodness.