POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity
Agenda
*One-pass admission for the week-long engagement.
13 February, 7.30–9.30pm
- Kaiten — Mangdem’ma: Invocations on History and Healing — Talk by Subas Tamang and Mekh Limbu
14 February, 7.30–9.30pm
- Muktik Dagar: A Path of Liberation — Talk by Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu, and Priyankar Bahadur Chand
15 February, 3–9pm
- 3–5pm: Untamable Dankini — an interactive session with Sheelasha Rajbhandari.
- 6–7.45pm: Drop by a Fireside Chat with the artists from Nepal, moderated by Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen.
- 7.45–9pm: End the night with Tika Chhedna Angana: Celebrating Tharu Tattoo Culture and Tradition.
About the Artists
Subas Tamang
- Subas Tamang is a descendant of traditional stone carvers from the Tamang indigenous community of Nepal. His artistic practice seeks to reframe Tamang history by challenging the dominant narratives of the past. His works deconstruct and repurpose archives concerning the state's exploitation of Tamang lives and labor within the context of the fraught relationship between his community and the evolving Nepali state since the 18th century.
Mekh Limbu
- Mekh Limbu is a Kathmandu-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Dhankuta. Coming from the indigenous Limbu community, his work often addressed the sometimes occluded indigenous identity within contemporary Nepali society. He also uses his art as a bridge to communicate between older and newer generations concerning language, ritual, and history.
Lavkant Chaudhary
- Lavkant Chaudhary is an artist from the indigenous Tharu peoples of the Tarai, and his art directly addresses issues related to his community and their struggle for rights and recognition within the history of the Nepali nation-state. By embedding archival matter and indigenous vocabularies in his art, he aims to unravel the multiple inequities Tharu peoples have faced.
Indu Tharu
- Indu Tharu is an artist, poet, and activist. As an indigenous Tharu woman, her writings, performances, and installations actively address her community’s voice. She explores themes of remembrance, loss, and violence and their impact on individual and societal consciousness. Her works are particularly informed by the recent People’s War in Nepal (1996–2006) and its effect on her family and community.
Priyankar Bahadur Chand
- Priyankar Bahadur Chand is a researcher incorporating archival and field-based methodologies in his works. His ongoing study includes assembling and contextualising the archives of the SKIB-71 art collective, looking at the long history of disease and territory in the Tarai, recording body marking traditions along the Indo-Nepal borderland, and exploring the visual historiography of cultures across the Himalayas.
Sheelasha Rajbhandari
- Sheelasha Rajbhandari is an artist and curator based in Kathmandu. Her works draw upon an embodied and speculative lineage of femininities to question the positioning of women and fluid beings and decentre patriarchal structures that perpetuate cycles of industrial extraction and individual exhaustion. For her, art-making is about making space for collective action that recomposes notions of indigeneity, gender, sexuality, worth, and productivity.
About This Event
The third iteration of Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations — live gathering of Per°Form Fellows, intersectional practitioners across diverse disciplines of curation, research, education, visual culture, performance presenting their strategies for activating contexts and communities — opens with indigenous artists and curators from Nepal. Based in Kathmandu, many of these Fellows are associated with the arts space Kalā Kulo and the collective ArTree Nepal. Their practice reclaims mainstream narratives of Nepal and its surrounding region that often excludes the stories and experiences of numerous marginalised, underserved, and indigenous communities. While celebrating diverse cultural heritage, this gathering also acknowledges the historical and political complexities faced by these communities, encompassing experiences of oppression, displacement, and the enduring legacy of Nepal’s People's War (1996–2006). It pays homage to indigenous sovereignty movements, acknowledges embodied practices, and re-examines contemporary and ancestral understandings of identity — including queerness.
13 February, 7.30-9.30pm: Kaiten — Mangdem’ma: Invocations on History and Healing — Talk by Subas Tamang and Mekh Limbu
How do Indigenous communities navigate the intertwined landscapes of history, trauma and cultural loss? This session reflects on artistic practices that transform memory into resistance from the tactile impressions of woodblock prints, to the evocative power of oral traditions, and the layered narratives of textiles and moving images. Per°Form Fellows, Subas Tamang and Mekh Limbu, reclaim histories obscured by colonisation, displacement and forced labor, tracing the fractures left by the erosion of cultural ties. Grounded in ancestral knowledge, they engage intergenerational memory and spiritual practices, creating spaces where healing and resistance converge. These defiant acts challenge the persistent weight of control, surveillance and disenfranchisement. The discussion also highlights the artists' ongoing advocacy for Indigenous territorial rights in the face of disruptive "development” projects that undermine ecological and spiritual balance.
14 February, 7.30-9.30pm: Muktik Dagar: A Path of Liberation — Talk by Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu, and Priyankar Bahadur Chand
Jokhan Ratgaiya, a Tharu poet and editor of “Muktik Dagar” (Path of Liberation), published poetry and essays during the Nepal People’s War in the late 1990s. In 2001, he was killed during this war. In 2020, surviving volumes of “Mutik Dagar” were rediscovered, with writings on the systematic dispossession of Tharu lands, the bonded labour system, and other structures of oppression.
In Nepal, a collective amnesia seems to have obscured the trauma of the conflict years, with reflections on reconciliation often reduced to hollow rhetoric. Drawing on the legacy of “Mutik Dagar”, Per°Form Fellows Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu and Priyankar Bahadur Chand present recent collective efforts of resisting and remembering as active sites of cultural production.
15 February, 3–9pm: Untamable Dankini, Fireside Chat, and Tika Chhedna Angana: Celebrating Tharu Tattoo Culture and Tradition
For many, dissociation becomes a survival mechanism in the face of burnout and exhaustion — feelings that emerge not only from battling oppressive forces but also from navigating conflicts with loved ones, communities, and within ourselves. In an endless struggle, where can care find its place?
As part of "Untamable Dankini," an interactive/sharing session crafted by Per°Form Fellow Sheelasha Rajbhandari, participants are invited to rest, play, and reconnect through sensory experiences. This gathering encourages an intentional slowing down, engaging with colors, textures, and grounding rituals as acts of resistance. It opens space to acknowledge and explore kinship, non-binary, and fluid forms of being. "Dankini" embodies a range of meanings, from feminine enlightened spirits to demoness, often used derisively today against women who defy societal norms. By exploring the multifaceted nature of Dankini, the conversations aim to weaken and deconstruct imposed limitations.
- 3–5pm: Untamable Dankini — an interactive session with Sheelasha Rajbhandari.
- 6–7.45pm: Drop by a Fireside Chat with the artists from Nepal, moderated by Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen.
- 7.45–9pm:Tika Chhedna Angana: Celebrating Tharu Tattoo Culture and Tradition.
- End the night with the rich tradition of tika body marking, an Indigenous art form of the Tharu women of the Tarai region. "Tika Chhedna Angana” (“a garden of body markings") was a unique gathering in March 2024, in Bardiya, Nepal. In Bardiya, elders, artists, knowledge bearers of this corporeal history shared stories of joy, friendship and sisterhood, filled with laughter and pain, and witnessed the rewriting of stories with ink and blood.
- End the night with the rich tradition of tika body marking, an Indigenous art form of the Tharu women of the Tarai region. "Tika Chhedna Angana” (“a garden of body markings") was a unique gathering in March 2024, in Bardiya, Nepal. In Bardiya, elders, artists, knowledge bearers of this corporeal history shared stories of joy, friendship and sisterhood, filled with laughter and pain, and witnessed the rewriting of stories with ink and blood.
POA 2025 Opening: Mapping Faded Dreams — Keynote by Hit Man Gurung
Donation Ticketing
Inclusivity is a core value of Per°Form Open Academy. Tickets to the POA Opening Studio at Per°Form Open Academy will be on a donation basis, starting at a minimum suggested donation of $10 per multiple entry pass.
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Admission Rules
Rating / Age Limit
- No age limit for registration.
- All other admissions are subject to valid registration tickets produced at the entrance.
Photography / Video Recording Rules
- Please note that photographs and videos of patrons may be taken at the event for use in our archival and publicity materials.
Refund Policy
- All donations are non-refundable.
Wheelchair Users
- 72-13 is wheelchair-accessible and includes limited wheelchair seating. Please contact us at 6737 7213 to book wheelchair seats.
Contact Us
- For more information on Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations, visit performfellowship.org.
- For any enquiries, please email [email protected] or call at 6737 7213.
About Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations
Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations (POA), T:>Works’ pioneering platform on thought leadership in the arts, returns 7–28 February 2025. POA 2025 brings together some of the most respected and renowned figures at the intersection of arts and social responsibilities. Drawing on their decades-long practices to address issues of minority, disability, gender, sexuality, cultural representation, and stakeholder and public engagement, they challenge conventional perceptions on what is possible today.
Banner and portraits: Images courtesy of Subas Tamang, Mekh Limbu, Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu, Priyankar Bahadur Chand, and Sheelasha Rajbhandari.