Sonam Dolma Brauen’s moving installation piece “My Father’s Death” yields alternative grief healing at Nelson-Atkins

Sonam Dolma Brauen creating “My Father’s Death,” The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. // Photo by Matin Brauen

Intimately made, universally understood: Sonam Dolma Brauen’s internationally renowned installation piece, “My Father’s Death” tells the story of personal grief and the profound process of healing through art. 

Brauen’s most exhibited piece of sculpture, “My Father’s Death,” has now permanently grace the halls of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art since Oct. 4, 2023, allowing the people of Kansas City the opportunity to experience her deeply personal exploration of memory and loss firsthand. The installation piece will offer visitors a powerful connection to Tibetan Buddhist traditions while inviting reflection on universal themes of grief and healing. Its presence at the museum enriches the cultural landscape of Kansas City, providing a lasting encounter with contemporary art that bridges personal history and spiritual inquiry.

The dynamic piece’s incorporation into the Nelson—highlighting the artist’s journey from refugee to internationally recognized sculptor—was brought about by former museum curator Leesa Fanning. Fanning first encountered the work and included it in her book Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art, underscoring its significance in modern artistic engagements with spirituality. In tribute to Fanning, Brauen and her husband generously gifted the installation to the museum, expanding The Nelson-Atkins Museum’s collection and deepening its relationship with spiritual and contemporary art. 

Brauen, born in Tibet in 1953, fled to India during her youth and later emigrated to Sweden. In 2010, splitting her time between Europe and the United States, Brauen created the renowned work. Through an experimental engagement with the installation art form, Brauen explores her personal relationship with spirituality, grief, and memory. Delicately and powerfully composed, “My Father’s Death” offers viewers a space to contemplate their own experiences of grief and remembrance alongside the artist Brauen.

“Cloth and plaster, 49 cast-off monk’s robes, 2 vests, and 9 molded plaster tsa tsa, dimensions variable,” reads The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s description of Sonam Dolma Brauen’s moving installation piece, “My Father’s Death.” Within this one-sentence description, a dynamic, multi-sensory, emotionally intense, and deeply personal story lives.

“Cloth and plaster”

The entirety of Brauen’s moving installation piece is made from cloth and plaster. Just these two physical aspects tell an expansive, interrelated story of personal and political histories, spirituality, and grief. “My Father’s Death” is made from cloth originating from Tibet. At the age of six, Sonam Dolma Brauen and her family fled from Tibet during the Chinese occupation.

Over the course of their journey, Brauen’s four-year-old sister died in a refugee camp. Shortly following the death of her younger sister, her father, Dhondup—a Buddhist monk—passed away. Due to the high funeral costs, the Brauen family could not afford to retrieve Dhondup’s body from the hospital where he perished. Dhondup’s death without proper burial weighed heavily upon the spirit of Brauen as she aged.

When Brauen began making art as an adult, she returned to the experience of flight, fear, and grief she experienced when a young girl; She returned to the memory of Tibet and all that she lost when fleeing its fluctuating borders. 

“49 cast-off monk’s robes”

The cloth that creates Brauen’s “My Father’s Death“ is the material from 49 “cast-off,“ or rather, donated robes from Tibetan monks. At the beginning of her creation process, Brauen made a hopeful call to Tibetan monasteries for used robes. Her call was answered with a package brimming with maroon and turmeric-colored cloth that, according to Brauen, “smelled like Tibet.“

The smell—which Brauen identified as primordially Tibetan—emitting from the cloth’s folds was the aroma of incense. This deep, smoky perfume became so thoroughly embedded in the fabric during the monks’ lifetimes that the scent of incense still wafts from the robes today. When walking into the exhibit space housing “My Father’s Death,“ viewers are welcomed with the smell of Tibet, just as Brauen was over two decades ago.

While the monk’s robes emit the singular soft smell of incense, the robes themselves offer a varied array of uses. The Buddhist monk’s robe is an incredibly versatile article of clothing—a monk’s robe can serve as a blanket, a seat spread, a groundsheet, a head cover, a windbreaker, and, as Brauen demonstrates, an artistic memorial. In “My Father’s Death,“ Brauen revitalizes the Buddhist monk’s donated robes, infusing their versatile purpose with new creative meaning charged with the memory of her father.

Brauen’s father, a Buddhist monk, wore robes much like the ones she folds in her work. For her, the material evokes not only sensory memories—the familiar scent drawing her back to her childhood in Tibet—but also deep personal recollections of her father and his life in and around these robes. The material is thus both resonant of the land she fled and the father she lost. 

Detail of tsa tsas, Sonam Dolma Brauen, “My Father’s Death,” The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
// Photo by Martin Brauen

“2 vests”

Alongside the donated robes, two vests were included in the package Brauen received from Tibet. Each piece of cloth—from the 49 robes to the two vests—is handled with great reverence and precision in the creation of “My Father’s Death.“ 

Brauen turned to the 51 pieces of donated cloth, folding each with care. The folding process is as physically involved as it is emotionally intimate. Kneeling, Brauen smooths out every wrinkle, sharpens each edge with a deft touch, and gently layers each rectangular piece on top of the other to create her composition. This thoughtful, repetitive process continues, each fold imbued with care and intention until every piece of fabric rests atop another—a harmonious puzzle, made and laid with intention and love. 

Together, the folded robes and vests create a low square pillar. Its height and breadth allow those walking the exhibit the ability to peer into its center: at the pillar’s heart sits a shadowed well. 

“9 molded tsa tsa”

Sitting within the piece’s heart are nine hand-molded tsa tsa. Tsa Tsa is used as holy oblation—or objects offered to a god—within Tibetan Buddhism. Tsa tsa are associated with penance, disaster prevention, and health, and are thus found in many holy spaces in the Buddhist canon; tsa tsa exist within Buddha statues, atop monastery altars, within holy caves, or beside holy mountains, lakes, or paths. 

Brauen created the tsa tsa within her piece. To make the tsa tsa Brauen rid the clay of its impurities, added water, and kneaded it into her mold. Tsa tsa molds are metal or pottery pieces with hollowed and reserved images of the Buddha or other sacred symbols. After the clay has been pressed into the mold, it is fired and dried. Some tsa tsa are then colored or decorated with Buddhist texts. Brauen left her nine tsa tsa a starch white. 

The crisp, unadorned white of the tsa tsa serves as a striking contrast to the rich, well–loved red and yellow of the surrounding robes. Their brightness cuts through the ruby-shadows, calling the viewer’s attention to what they might at first think is but an empty space at the piece’s heart; Brauen proves this first-thought wrong. 

Within the tradition of tsa tsa production, the cremated ashes of loved ones or a spiritual teacher can be incorporated into the clay to produce a blessed tsa tsa. Unable to retrieve her father’s body, Brauen was consequently unable to incorporate his ashes into her tsa tsa.

That being said, though she was impeded from physically incorporating her father’s being into the clay, each of her nine molded pieces were made with his memory in mind. Brauen’s father Dhondup exists at the heart of the sculpture in essence if not in physical presence.

The tsa tsa’s connection to sacred sites further imbues Brauen’s work with a sense of sanctity. Just as tsa tsa stand in the holiest sites in the Buddhist canon, they also stand as sacred objects within the Nelson, memorializing the life of Dhondup.

“Dimensions variable”

Brauen makes, un-makes, and remakes “My Father’s Death“ in an ongoing ritual. There is no fixed dimension for the work because it never settles into a permanent form—each unfolding and refolding of the robes alters its shape. This fluidity reflects the impermanence at the heart of both the artwork and the experience it represents.

Just as “My Father’s Death“ defies a fixed state of being, grief itself resists definition. Grief ebbs and flows, shifting with time, just as the robes in Brauen’s hands take on new forms. This constant reconfiguration mirrors how our emotions evolve, how memories resurface, and how the way we cope changes. By remaking the piece again and again, Sonam Dolma Brauen captures the cyclical nature of mourning—a process that never fully resolves but transforms with each encounter, allowing space for reflection, healing, and the ongoing dialogue between loss and memory.

Sonam Dolma Brauen’s “My Father’s Death“ is on view through Nov. 11 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Brauen also