"Mechak" is Tibetan for an iron edged tool used for creating sparks.
Mechak Center's mision is to promote and cultivate contemporary Tibetan art that has the potential to ignite
a renewal of Tibetan culture.
We are a non-profit group working to create a community of Tibetan artists from what is currently, a few
isolated individuals making art in different parts of the world. The logical extension of this work will be the
building of artistic and cultural bridges to artists working inside Tibet. We believe such an effort will
contribute profoundly to Tibetan society's cultural vibrancy and growth.
The 'modern' art of traditional societies is a new and exciting development in recent years, and it has played
a vital role in reinvigorating the culture in those societies. It is an art that explores its own culture while
sharing it with a larger world audience because of its authentic yet universal expressions. This sort of new art
has 
been loosely termed as "transvangarde", meaning the work of artists "working at the forefront of their
culture while assimilating into their work elements from other cultures".
This symbiotic relationship between art and society doesn't necessarily happen or rely
on the direct viewing of the art, but also through its influences on the work of writers,
film makers, musicians and other storytellers within the society. The work of artists
engaged in producing art as a self-determining process cannot help but impact the whole society and become
a catalyst for cultural renewal. And a renewal of culture must occur before any meaningful political renewal can
begin at a societal level.
We believe that a new Tibetan Art can speak to the psychic turmoil that the Tibetan people are undergoing,
and that it can engage Tibetan society in a dialog between the past and present cultural surroundings, whether
it be in Tibet or in exile. The potential of art to create spaces that don't yet exist in reality, can help us explore, shape
and define what we become as a culture, and how we maintain our spiritual center even as the edges of our
worlds move. Contemporary Tibetan Art has the power to explore new images, ideas and visions
of ourselves and our changing worldviews, providing a crucial balance to the overwhelming influences of Chinese,
Indian and Western culture, which few young Tibetans are equipped to evaluate and assess fully before assimilating
them wholesale into their lives.
The thrust of Tibetan efforts in exile towards cultural expression for the last 50 years
has been the preservation of tradition, and it has been a remarkable success in many
ways. But we live in a world where we cannot successfully survive as a culture if we are
continually looking to our past. In fact the 'museumfication' of the real culture on the
one hand, mass production of forged cultural artifacts on the other, and the people
themselves in a freefall of cultural changes beyond their control, is a peril that has doomed many other peoples
and threatens Tibetan society today. Responding to all these factors, we feel Mechak can make a critical
contribution to Tibetan society no matter what occurs politically in the next fifty years.
