Sonam Yeshi was raised in a Tibetan community in the Himalayan foothills of India. Growing up, she was surrounded by traditional Tibetan craftsmen, including monks who lived in her house and made intricate Tibetan dolls donning carefully researched traditional costumes. Their workshop became her playroom and Sonam began painting and drawing at an early age. Later, she majored in fashion design and was drawn to working with colour and prints. She later came to realise how much her surroundings, both in terms of culture and environment, had influenced her work, and continues to play with those motifs.

Sonam yeshi

EVOLUTION: Tibetan Women by Sonam Yeshi

Artist statement

I created Evolution during the lockdown when the world came to a standstill. The new rhythm of life, no longer dictated by deadlines, gave me the leeway to work on projects for their own sake, bringing out ideas and visions that had floated in my mind for years.

This series reflects my growing interest in regional Tibetan women’s headgear, once worn daily but now mostly donned on special occasions such as weddings or festivals. Growing up in India, my knowledge of these was second-hand, and I drew on the extensive resources around me, which I later compounded with images from my travel in Tibet.  Evolution is about contemporary women who have learned to navigate past and present trends in the many nomadic areas on the Tibetan Plateau. Their mishmash combinations of traditional dress with modern accessories such as face masks, sunglasses, bold printed faux silk shirts, and platform shoes were the inspiration for this series.

My art seeks to playfully capture and portray these women through this combination of tradition versus Kitsch, using colour, print, accessories, and fashion elements. Evolution is a window on the changing scene of Tibetan dress rendered with humour and love. It is also a tribute to the present. Face masks, already widely used by women to protect their faces from sun and dust, have now firmly taken their place in the fight against the pandemic.