I have taken the traditional way of depicting eyes of the Tibetan deities and applied it to the collective mindset of the Tibetans. In traditional or Classical Tibetan art (painting and sculpture) there are three ways to depict their eyes.
1) Drak-Chen (the wrathful eyes) 2) Do-Chen (the seed-shaped eyes) 3) Shu-Chen (the bow-shaped eyes)
I have played with the idea of those types of eyes and attempted to portray it in a genealogical scale. Wherein, the wrathful eyes represents the idea of complete independence. As all Tibetans initially stood for that view. The bow- shaped eyes to me represent the political ideology of autonomy. Philosophically, it represents the idea of madya-mika-karika (the middle-way philosophy) and the seed-shaped eyes to me represent the idea of individuals accepting the assimilation of self to the idea of universality. The safety pins for me represent the individual's need or desire to preserve their own thoughts which often comes with great pain. The alignment of the three pieces in a vertical manner is my way of looking at the whole evolution as a downfall of who/what we were to what we are becoming into.