Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La will be curated by artists Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung, and will feature the work of artist Tsherin Sherpa.

 

The inaugural Nepal Pavilion will be presented at Sant’Anna Project Space One, located on Fondamenta S. Anna in the area between the Arsenale and Giardini – the two main venues of La Biennale di Venezia.

Appointed by Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, the project is co-commissioned by the Nepal Academy of Fine Arts and the Siddhartha Arts Foundation, with lead global support from the Rubin Museum of Art.

Trained in the art of thangka painting, Tsherin Sherpa (born in Kathmandu, 1968) is regarded today as one of Nepal’s foremost contemporary artists. For the Biennale Arte 2022, he will collaborate with artists across the country to draw upon materials from a shared history and incorporate accounts encoded in oral cultures, woven languages, and quotidian rituals to implicate an intersectional and intertwined past that problematizes contradictory conceptualizations of Nepal as well as the broader Himalayan region. 

The highlands of Asia have always emanated a sense of mystique, sacredness, and remoteness. However, fluidity, mobility, and an exchange of knowledge have flourished between communities for centuries. Often these complexities get obfuscated through a “Shangri La” effect, which persists in popular imaginations. 

This fetishization triggers paradoxical representations of Himalayan communities as primitive, yet wise; lacking historical accounts, yet rich in spiritual wisdom; sturdy physically, yet bereft materially.