Alena Telpuhovskaya «Tibet. Touch.»

Project
«Tibet. Touch.»
«Gates. On the way to natural liberation»

14.04.2006 – 11.05.2006

Since April 14 till May 11 within the Moscow “Photobiennale-2006”the exhibition of Alena Telpuhovskaya will take place at Elena Vrublevskaya gallery. The exposition will include the works from the project “Tibet. Touch” and “Gates. On the way to natural liberation”. The author suggests the spectator making two journeys at a time – the one to Tibet and the other one to his own inner world.

A journey (this topic is presented by Alena at “Photobiennale”) is always connected with the search, cognition. Making a journey to the geographic Tibet, the author makes even a longer way to find herself. “When we come up to the God's Gate – isn't it the aim of the whole mundane way? it might be the main journey, the goal of our incarnation.” (From the text to the exhibition)

Tibetan series of Alena Telpuhovskaya were first presented at the festival “Tibet: traditions, art, philosophy” in 2004. Observing several festival exhibitions, it was interesting to trace the various ways different photographers and artists, who find their inspiration in Tibet, view Tibet. Black and white photographs from the album “Pilgrim” by Richard Gere tell us about a hard fate of Tibetan people, and the colored pictures of Alena Telpuhovskaya showed a surprising beauty and mystical richness of these places.

The second project “Gates. On the way to natural liberation” appeared after Alena's first visit to Tibet. That time she first got in touch with spiritual teaching and practices. As the artistic method in this project Alena has used the allegoric comparison of the children images with the images of peaceful and wrathful deities, accompanying us on our way to the Gates. The spectator is suggested to think about the Inevitable from the point of view of the days that he has lived already. Alena has picked out a few extracts from the «Tibetan Book of the Dead » translated by professor Robert Thurman to use them in the text for the exhibition:

“With mind distracted, never thinking, “Death is coming,”
To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,
And then to come out empty – it is a tragic error.
Recognition of necessity is the holy teaching of the gods”.

The works of ALena Telpuhovskaya are undoubtedly the modern European person's view of the spiritual practices. But her sincere and deep interest towards eastern culture and philosophy, her aspiration for self-knowing and finding belief within oneself speak for a considerable influence of traditions in her creative activity.