By: Noeka Nimmervoll, Staff Writer
As a child of immigrant parents who grew up on unceded Indigenous land, I’ve often wondered what life would be like if I grew up in my parents’ home countries. When you’re removed from your place of origin, by force or by nature, there is a longing for something you don’t know: an unnameable grief of separation from a world that is rightfully yours. This is the feeling that resonates through Entangled Territories: Tibet Through Images, the new exhibition at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology (MOA). Open from November 20, 2025, to March 29, 2026, this exhibit features archives from MOA, curated by Dr. Fuyubi Nakamura, as well as works from young Tibetan Canadian artists, Lodoe Laura and Kunsang Kyirong. Tibet Through Images is an emblem of the lived experiences of diasporic Tibetan people. I attended the opening celebrations on November 20 to learn more.
Tibet is a secluded Buddhist territory currently occupied by China. However, from 1912 to 1951, it was an independent nation, as declared by the 13th Dalai Lama, Tibet’s religious and political leader. The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 forced Tibet’s surrender of independence, eventually leading to the current Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet in 1959, followed by around 80,000 Tibetans. Now, these Tibetans and their lineage live widely abroad, either in Tibet’s established exile government in Dharamshala, India, or settling elsewhere, while working to keep their unique culture alive. Some Tibetan people have never set foot in Tibet. Canada is home to one of the largest populations of Tibetan people outside of Asia.
Tibet Through Images, nestled in the MOA, begins with “Colonized/Colonizer,” a photography display by Laura that visualizes her British/Tibetan heritage. Cleverly mounted in a corner, the pictures capture the artist in separated cultural identities that differ so strongly in motive — indeed, the colonized and the colonizer. Her eyes look at you from every angle, gently daring witnesses of the portraits to consider her circumstances.
Further inside the exhibition, Laura’s photographs surround the room in a personal narrative that feels like grief: these vivid frames capture her father as he looks at Tibet from Nepal, the bordering country from which he managed a monastery. Unable to visit Tibet, her father is so close to home, yet so far from it, limited by political circumstances. The portraits are intimate and quietly poetic, showing a lived reality, and not just an artefact of the past.
Two films by Kyirong were also featured: Yarlung, a short story made of both fiction and non-fiction materials focusing on loss, and Letters From Tibet, a specially commissioned work using archival materials from the MOA’s collection. Yarlung was illustrated in a swooping, dreamlike animation that made you feel as if not everything was okay. It offered simple words for big tragedies, and was felt as much as it was seen.
The rooms surrounding the two artists’ works were adorned with Tibetan zhubas (gowns), jewellery, art, and other items from the museum’s collection. In the arrangement of the room, the present day diasporic Tibetans are grounded in the history of the culture of their homeland.
The Tibetan people may now have created homes across the world, but they still remain defiant in exploring Tibet — even if they are on a different continent.
Visit Entangled Territories: Tibet Through Images at UBC’s MOA until March 29, 2026.
