Having just returned from Tibet I was pretty eager to get these photos up considering that blogging and facebooking (among many others) are illegal activities in the People’s Republic of China. Well now they’re up and the Chinese can’t do shit about it except revoke my visas and arrest me when I go back. But if that happens then we’ll know the Mill has really made it. I digress.

I took these photos at a gallery/workshop outside of Lhasa that we had the rare privilege of seeing. The professor leading our trip has an old friend, a talented Tibetan artist, who runs the place and brought us in. He was trained in Beijing at arguably the best arts institute in the country and has used his skill, alongside his colleagues, to develop their little known gallery- housed in an unassuming, oldish Tibetan building. Some of the pieces are highly controversial by Chinese standards. Others are more subdued. However, it all takes a clever approach to reach the intended result. Much of it deals with a disappearing culture, oppression and the persistence of Buddhism (or what’s left of it). I apologize for the photo quality on some as I was running through the gallery taking snapshots of everything without a tripod or proper exposure but you get the point. This is only a handful of the pieces but it shows the varied mediums and focuses. The artists have no websites or much in the way of professional development but you can access a past catalogue from a recent show in Beijing at the Red Gate Gallery (www.redgategallery.com) under “Return to Lhasa”, artists Gade and Tsering Nyandak.