Oneness: Performance by Sonam Dolma Brauen
"I truly hope that my art can create change. I know my art might only have a small impact, but I feel a strong responsibility for the mark I leave behind. With the limited time I have in this world, I promise to give my best effort."
- Sonam Dolma Brauen
Artist-in-Residence:
Sonam Dolma
Charleston, SC | Spring 2026
Oneness
Performance & Installation
Cistern Yard and Albert Simons Center for the Arts
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC
March/April, 2026
During her time as Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts’ artist-in-residence in Spring 2026, leading Swiss-Tibetan artist Sonam Dolma led numerous workshops leading up to her Oneness performance and installation. Participants from various communities formed their own tsa tsas, small votive objects composed of clay, using exact replicas of the brass tsa tsa mold that Dolma’s family carried with them when they left Tibet in 1959. Into these tsa tsas, they inserted various items such as barley grains blessed by the Dalai Lama, written prayers and wishes, and small personal tokens. On April 12, workshop participants gathered at the College of Charleston’s Cistern Yard. Led by Dolma, they carried the tsa tsas in a meditative procession through the campus and into the Simons Center for the Arts where they installed Oneness.
Dolma explains: “with Oneness, I wish to create a collective call for peace together with others. We are only visitors on this earth. We are not here forever. In the end, we all become ash. What remains is our interconnectedness.”
ཡིད་བཞིན། - As the Mind Wishes - Exhibition in Dharamshala, October 2025
curated by Khadhok - A Tibetan Artists Collective.
Tashi Nyima, Lea Taake and Tenzin Melak
At the heart of Khadhok is a simple but powerful mission: to create space; for Tibetan contemporary artists to share their work, for a community to grow across generations and for art to spark dialogue, reflection and connection.
Based in Dharamshala, India, Khadhok is a collective that celebrates the richness and complexity of Tibetan life through art. Khadhok brings artists together not just to exhibit, but to support one another, to dream and to shape a shared creative future.