In his work, Tibetan-American artist Tenzin Phuntsog, who has had his repeated attempts to enter his ancestral home denied, often confronts his and his family’s existence in a state of exile. For Pure Land, Phuntsog builds a loose narrative around a long-distance conversation between a young Tibetan-American man and his Tibetanborn mother. The character wanders through a natural landscape resembling the exiled homeland of his mother, taking photographs in an attempt to “find a frame that evokes a sense of belonging.” The camera is used as an instrument to reveal the impossibility for displaced Tibetan individuals to be seen in actual Tibetan landscapes. The sparse terrains in Pure Land were shot by the artist in Montana and on the land of the Black Feet Nation with their permission.

Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery, New York

• Sektion Section: Film
• Programm Programme: Ruins, Replacements