Tibetan waxworks of the living and the dead

The waxwork is a new medium of Buddhist materiality that now coexists with the metal statue, the photograph, and the painted scroll in the Tibetan cultural sphere. It is usually departed Buddhist masters who are immortalized as wax effigies. The hyperrealistic aesthetics extends their presence among devotees since wax can be formed and colored to look exactly like the living person. Tibetan waxworks are particularly fascinating in relation to the Buddhist sacred. In this article, I introduce the waxwork as a new medium of Buddhist materiality, and I present one assemblage of a deceased religious authority and its living maker.

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