Curated by Tenzing Sedonla Ukyab and Abeer Gupta
The exhibition is grounded, in and hopes to initiate conversations around complex relationships with the idea of home and ways in which it shapes the understanding of ourselves and the world around us with artists from the Himalayas at the intersections of identity, mobility, and the coexistence of diverse perspectives.
It explores the perspectives from the periphery, their relation to multiple centers in flux, and the fluidity of identities, in an attempt to challenge notions of representation, access, inclusions, and exclusions. Rooted in the politics of representation of the Himalayas, it attempts to focus on nurturing living cultural practices and vernacular realities.
This exercise hopes to offer a critical exploration of nuanced relationships between the experience and materiality of the self, place, and community.
Please click to expand.
Gallery 1 - Landscapes
Pasang Dolpo
Pasang Dolpo was born in Bhijer Village in Upper Dolpo, a rugged mountainous region in North-West Nepal. From a very young age, he was interested in drawing, although most of his time was taken up with helping his mother: as the eldest son, he had to step in to assist when his father passed away when he was only 5 years old. He would go herding animals like yaks, sheep, goats, and horses. Pasang would spend some of the winters with his uncle and maternal grandfather from whom he studied traditional, formal education of reading and writing Tibetan, which is his native language. Currently Pasang is based in Kathmandu where he continues his drawing and painting work, and side by side he runs a hospitality business focused on improving opportunities for and skills of women from his homeland Dolpo.
Jigmet Angmo
Born and raised (mostly) in the cold Himalayan desert region of Ladakh, the rugged landscape with its barren mountains, deep valleys, and high plains, developed a strong sense of wonder and imagination in Jigmet Angmo, which she explores within these very surreal settings. Vernacular architecture has been a central theme in her work, mostly using watercolours and acrylic. She believes them to be a living, breathing shelter that watches, nourishes, and endures the people who have come and gone through time.
Skarma Sonam Tashi
Skarma Sonam Tashi's works seek to generate a new relationship and experience of an image beyond the material's functionality. They are playful, and intuitive and often refer to the transforming experience of landscape. In Skarmai’s words, “l am fascinated by my own native landscape. The egg tray reminds me of the mountain ranges of Ladakh, where l was born and grew up. Since l stayed for many years outside Ladakh, away from mountain ranges, but still they were an important part of my memory of my homeland.” A metaphor lies in the coexistence between the organic and industrial practice, because the raw material itself is organic and biodegradable, while the casted shape of egg trays are made from an industrial process.
Zahara Batool
Zahara Batool is an artist from Kargil. Her work is carefully made using combinations of different types of wires, along with materials such as wood and mesh. The impetus behind her practice is, as Batool herself puts it, “my artwork and my art practice is inspired from my native place, culture and traditions. I find every culture and traditions very beautiful and colourful and I find its rawness very appealing.” Batool’s works are an attempt to capture and preserve the essence of the beauty of her culture, traditions, and topography of her native land, her home. Her choice of material reflects a deep consideration of the elements that drive her artistic practice and her profound reverence for where she comes from.
Chemat Dorjey
Proverbs have proven to be lifelong examples of shrewdness, tinged with the human condition of being sarcastic, while at the same time educative, for speakers as well as listeners.
Artist Chemat Dorjey in collaboration with Rigzin Chodon, whose research project sought out the questions of understanding illustrations of various styles in the archival newspapers written in the Tibetan script by Moravian Missionaries in Kyelang, Lahaul and Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas; conversed around reinterpretation of Ladakhi proverbs from the newspapers that lay open to artistic rendition.
The artist carefully chose and crafted four proverbs from the newspapers, onto glass using the method of engraving. He draws out the proverbs into visuals that he feels encapsulates the essence of the society and the culture of the people of Ladakh. These old adages which are still used today convey the perpetual spirit of oral sayings that remind one about the synchronicity of life, that oral traditions bring forth with the use of a spoken language.
The four glass works can be seen within four vernacular window frames from Ladakh. The glasswork emits the reflection of light from behind, thus bringing forth the proverbs into a visual rendition. For speakers of Ladakhi language, these proverbs once spoken, then recorded in the newspapers, can now be seen in a visual form. It gives us a sense of movement through time, the human mind, and our speech.
Acknowledgment:
This collaboration is the result of an exercise to discuss and experiment with the visual interpretations of the illustrations along with proverbs from the newspapers, Kyelang Agbar and Ladvags Phonya (Pub.1927-1944) in 2019. The artwork was conceived in 2018 and finally completed in 2022. The project is a part of the Ila Dalmia Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, Research Grant (2018) conferred to Dr. Rigzin Chodon for the project titled, ‘Hand-made Sketches from the Early-20th Century Newspapers of Ladakh and Kyelang: A Study of Kyelang Agbar and Ladvags Phonya (1925-35; 1936-47 & 1952-59 A.D.).
Proverb 1
‘Nor metey sang,
Nyam met na thu.’ (Language: Ladakhi)
English Translation:
‘It is better not to have wealth,
Than not to have the understanding and value of things’.
Proverb 2
‘Kor kor tey Korpon,
Oldan Tsering ey go la.’ (Language: Ladakhi)
English Translation:
‘For all the bad deeds done,
It is Oldan Tsering who is to be blamed.’
Meaning:
Malakhan, a performer of Ladakh would keep mud in a tin can and say, “Kor kor tey Korpon Oldan Tsering Ey Go la”. He would say this because earlier Olden Tsering would do bad deeds and since then, he was always blamed for every bad deed. The performer would take dust and throw it on top of a statue, saying the above.
Proverb 3
‘Askuta shing man,
Lowa sha man,
Drokpa mi man.’ (Language: Ladakhi)
English Translation:
‘Askuta is not wood,
Liver is not meat and
Drokpa are not men.’
Proverb 4:
‘Khatey mitsang pey zos pey chu,
Tsa tsang jhan la bat ney chi.’ (Language: Ladakhi)
English Translation:
‘A crow eats unclean things,
And cleans his beak on clean soil.’
Meaning:
When a crow eats unclean things and then rubs his beak on clean soil, it tends to unnecessarily dirty the clean soil.
Gallery 2 - People
Priyanka Singh Maharjan
Priyanka Singh Maharjan is a Kathmandu-based Visual Artist and an Art Facilitator. She completed her Bachelor's in Fine Arts degree from Kathmandu University, Centre for Art and Design in 2018. Her art practices are mostly focused on her past and the re-interpretation of memories through diverse mediums. She is currently exploring giving visual structures to intangible but real elements of her past/memories through photographs, embroidery, and pen works.
Memories are strange. They bring warmth and loneliness together. The warmth comes from what remains, and loneliness from a distance that time creates.
Memories do not always come in waves; they might as well be a faint ripple on the surface. There may be times you feel a little itch, and times you do not even notice it. You may choose to scratch it for relief, or scratch until it opens up the void you can never fill. Photographs are the most vivid stains. It swiftly transports us to the events in the past at one glance. I hand-embroider onto images transferred from the old photographs. Embroidering feels close to home... These reproduced visuals have been a medium to communicate experiences and re-interpret past occurrences.
Tashi Namgail
Tashi Namgail is trained as a painter, and a research-driven installation artist, trained at the College of Art, Delhi and the Benaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He has an expansive repertoire as an illustrator, several public art projects and murals, and is in the process of restoring Abdu house and setting it up as Huedok Studio and Gallery. Tashi's works explore folk music and folklore extensively and are explored across mediums and formats, developing an extensive repertoire across site-based installations and exhibitions.
Subas Tamang
Subas Tamang comes from a family of traditional stone carvers. He incorporates carving, engraving, and different forms of printmaking. He belongs to the indigenous Tamang community, much of whose history is based on oral traditions that are not well-documented. Because of this historic information gap, he seeks to archive the cultural and social fabrics of his and other communities. His art relives memories of those painful pasts. But his artistic creation also foregrounds Tamang aesthetics and inner resources. Through a symbol of a sacred flower - Ko Ko Mhendo also known in Tamang as a heart flower, Subas, illuminates the themes of spirituality, strength, resilience,
and resistance.