I was born around 1953. For the first six years of my life, I lived high in the Tibetan Alps in the region of Kongpo. After the Chinese invasion, we decided to leave Tibet. In 1960, I fled with my family to India. Both my father and my sister died.
When we first arrived in India, we earned money doing road construction. Later we moved to Shimla and Dehradun, where I attended an English Middle School. At the of age 19, I emigrated to Switzerland and married the Swiss anthropologist and curator Martin Brauen. My husband and I settled in Bern, where we raised two children: daughter Yangzom, an actress and writer; and son Tashi, a teacher and visual artist.
My formal artistic training began in 1990 when I attended classes at the Art School in Bern. Since that time, I have continued to study there with Arthur Freuler, Leopold Schropp, Serge Fausto Sommer and Mariann Bissegger. In June 2008, I moved to New York City, where my husband works as Chief Curator at the Rubin Museum of Art.
My art was exhibited in several galleries in Switzerland and the US and in the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, Holland.