At Art Basel Hong Kong this past March, the Nepali artist Tsherin Sherpa unveiled his latest installation, a 30-foot-long runner woven by artisans from Kathmandu titled Stairways to Heaven. The work depicts a dragon spiraling upwards, a common figure in Himalayan rugs, as it appears to move in and out of the frame, before it rears its head at the top. Crafted with silk, cotton, and wool fibers, it not only pays homage to this lunar year—2024 is the year of the dragon—but also represents the long history of Nepali carpet making.
“It’s very much like our tradition, our practice, and the situation of the carpet history. It was there. It’s not there. It’s there. It’s not there, and I hope it reappears in such a big way.” Sherpa told ARTnews during a recent studio visit. “For me, that was a simple way of trying to recount the carpet history.”
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The installation at Art Basel was accompanied by an entire booth dedicated to his carpet weaving series at the longtime Hong Kong gallery Rossi Rossi. It was the eight exhibition by Sherpa to feature the series since he began collaborating with a rug-designing studio two years ago. That project, which has in many ways become Sherpa’s signature series, harkens back to his childhood in Nepal.
Sherpa was born in Boudhha, an area northeast of Kathmandu’s center, home to the Bouddhha Stupa, one of the largest temples in the country. Located on an ancient trade route, the area was long home to merchants and artisans, but not much art.
“At that time, we didn’t have many galleries and people within the vicinity of Boudhha hardly interacted with the main city,” Sherpa recalled. “So, I think exposure to any other form of art was very limited for me.”
As a child and teen, Sherpa trained in Thangka painting—typically religious Buddhist painting on cotton or silk—under his father. He studied Mandarin and computer science in Taiwan in the 1980s, before moving to the US in 1998 after his mother’s friend invited him to stay with her in California, believing it would help expand his horizons. While there, he heard about a Tibetan Buddhist organization looking for a Thangka artist. They hired him to teach, and he stayed, exploring the art scene: meeting artists, visiting museums and galleries, and learning art history. But it was a visit in 2008 to see the exhibition “Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection” at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, that dramatically shifted his trajectory.
“Finally, I felt like these are the surroundings I grew up with. I could relate to it,” the 54-year-old artist said. “That’s how I started my career as a contemporary artist.”
Sherpa began combining traditional Buddhist and Nepali motifs, colors, symbols, and techniques with pop culture references. In 2015, however, Sherpa’s practice took another shift when he decided to move back home to be close to his family after the devastating earthquake that rocked the country, killing thousands and flattening entire villages. The Boudhha Stupa was one of the most badly damaged landmarks in Nepal. During one of his daily walks around his studio located in Boudhha, Sherpa came across a metal clanking sound and, upon investigation, met Rajen Shah, a third-generation artist who created traditional Buddhist ritual objects. A tea and a conversation later, Sherpa discovered that Shah was planning on giving up the art form and moving to Malaysia for work.
“He told me that nobody understands the quality of the work because he caters to certain dealers, and the shopkeeper always tries to minimize the cost. The buyers, visitors, and monasteries also don’t know so much about the quality of the work. They always want it cheap,” Sherpa said. “He said that he couldn’t compromise with the quality because he’s so highly trained and it was a heritage passed down by his father.”
Sherpa began to think about how decades of skill and practice would be lost if Shah, and others like him, left their trades. And that, if those people left, those practices might simply die out.
Sherpa said that he blurted out, “What if we work together?” and Shah quickly agreed to the collaboration. Together, they created an installation piece, Wish Fulfilling Tree (2016) – a copper repoussé work that featured objects found in homes broken and destroyed during the earthquake.
“I wanted to create a hopeful energy and commemorate those who lost their lives,” Sherpa said.
That piece was first featured at a Rossi Rossi in Hong Kong before making its way to the Kathmandu Triennale in 2017 and the Yinchuan Biennale in 2018. Sherpa and Shah eventually got invited to contribute to “Shrine Room Project: Wishes and Offerings,” a show at the Rubin Museum in New York, which acquired the piece for their collection.
“I told the museum to credit the collaborator because the whole idea of collaborating was to give him hope that there are other avenues and not just whoever you are catering to,” Sherpa said.
The positive response to the installation motivated Sherpa to expand the project to other traditional practices, particularly Thangka. He has since hired and trained 15 younger painters, who are being trained in Thangka, contemporary art, and the English language. He has also developed collaborations with a bronze foundry in Kathmandu, and now carpet weaving.
In 2019, Jigme Wangchuk, a third-generation rug maker, was looking for a design partner for his rugs and approached Sherpa about creating unique artistic rugs. For Wangchuk, who owns the carpet design studio Mt. Refuge, the idea of collaboration came from a need to revive a lost heritage and tradition of carpet weaving.
“When I was looking for artists, it was someone who could understand the traditional rug motif, but at the same time who has experience in making it into a contemporary form,” Wangchuk told ARTnews.
The history of the craft in Nepal dates to the 1950s, when Tibetan refugees fled to the country after China invaded Tibet. The Nepal government and the Swiss Red Cross set up refugee camps to provide shelter and assistance. Recognizing the weaving skills of women at the camp, the humanitarian organization set up small factories to support the craft, which gave birth to the carpet industry. But, as the demand for Nepali carpets grew over time, the focus shifted from a traditional craft and cultural symbol to a commercialized enterprise. International buyers began sending designs to local weaving companies, while artisans were left to provide manual labor.
“The art of making carpet is the contribution from the Tibetan refugees to Nepal,” Tshering Topgyal, a key member of the Tibetan refugee community in Nepal, told ARTnews.
Sherpa spent three years, after Wangchuk approached him, studying and understanding the history of the carpet industry and, in 2022, Wangchuk and Sherpa began to create limited-edition rugs. “I thought let’s try to erase the whole concept of carpet and create art,” Sherpa said.
Because 2022 was the Year of the Tiger in the Buddhist tradition, Sherpa focused on that element for his carpet designs. While the background of all the rug designs has been extracted from traditional Tibetan thangkas, the elements have been manipulated to lend an abstractness.
“The idea is not smearing everything traditional but realigning it differently so that it looks contemporary. But the tradition is very much alive, which gives you that nostalgic experience of something recognizable, while it looks modern to you,” Sherpa said. “My designs are very much influenced by my normal art practice. So, whatever abstractions that I do in my work get reflected in the rugs.”
Once Sherpa sends his paintings, Wangchuk and his design team discuss the sizes, colors, and materials that will emulate the image on the rug. The design is rewritten and converted into a digital format. The custom carpet-design software Galaincha helps the team trace and create graphs, which include details on the weaving knots, colors, and materials. It is printed out before being handed to a weaver for knotting and weaving.
The entire collection has been created using wool, silk, and alloy, as Wangchuk felt that those would be the best materials to reflect Sherpa’s work. While the wool is sourced from Tibet, the silk is imported from India and China. Additionally, they also wanted to create a textured and embossed effect on the rug, which was achieved with the different pile heights of the weaving rod. Once the rugs are ready, they are trimmed to bring out the pattern, before being cut to shape and washed. The back of each of the carpets features Sherpa’s signature, title, size, materials, edition number, and serial number.
“Even for us, it’s like making a painting. The size and the shape are like the canvas. The materials and the dyeing techniques are like the paint. The weaving technique and the different piles are like the brush,” Wangchuk said. “Once his art is finished, we have our own small art to create.”
The work of this collaboration was first featured in a solo exhibition at Nepal’s inaugural pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, titled “Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La.” Among other pieces, one was a half-woven carpet on a loom that featured discarded wool that Sherpa had collected from a closed carpet factory during his initial research into the industry
“When this was presented in Venice, I felt that our rug heritage has gotten justice. It has reached a destination where the whole world comes and sees and appreciates it,” Wangchuk said.
Over the past two years, the duo has created seven different designs with only 25 pieces available each in three sizes: 8’x10’, 9’x12’, and 10’x14’. Apart from that, they have also crafted ancient carpets with a contemporary twist like meditation carpets, tantric carpets, horse saddle carpets, and more.
The practice has been well received, leading to solo exhibitions at Asia Society Texas and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as well as works in shows on contemporary Tibetan Art at the Hood Museum of Art and elsewhere, and the Venice Biennale exhibition. It has also proved popular with museum acquisition committees and collectors, garnering attention at Art Basel Hong Kong and other fairs. In November, the duo will present another showcase of the collaboration at Art Mumbai.
“When we first made this, we wanted an art for the floor. But now when people see this, they find it so beautiful and delicate that they don’t want it on the floor.” Wangchuk said. “Most of the clients are hanging it on the wall, which is a good thing for us. The rug has been honored.”
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