In Motion and Memory: The Many Lives of Khorlo

In the quiet yet culturally vibrant neighborhood of Lazimpat in Kathmandu, the gallery space of Takpa Gallery opens its doors to a remarkable exhibition titled Khorlo—a Tibetan word meaning “the wheel.” This evocative show brings together four Tibetan artists currently based in Dharamshala, creating a rare and compelling cultural dialogue within the Nepali art scene. Running from April 5 to May 2, the exhibition stands out as a distinctive artistic encounter, offering Kathmandu’s audience a glimpse into a visual language shaped beyond its immediate geography.

What makes Khorlo particularly striking is its departure from the familiar. The palette, textures, and mediums employed by these artists diverge from what local viewers might typically encounter. Yet, rather than alienating, this difference invites curiosity—it becomes a bridge between neighboring cultures, bound not by distance but by shared histories of movement, memory, and adaptation.

Tenzin Gyurmey, the curator of the exhibition says that “Khorlo, means ‘wheel,’ reflects the endless cycle where identity is fluid, interconnected, and always evolving. In this exhibition, four Tibetan diaspora artists explore selfhood through memory, culture, and personal experience, each in their own distinct way. Together, their works show that identity is never fixed, but continuously shaped by time, history, and lived moments.”

At its heart, the exhibition unfolds as a space of convergence, where the sensibilities of two women and two men meet in a nuanced interplay of light and shadow, presence and absence. Each artist approaches their work as a deeply personal inquiry, rooted in lived experience yet shaped by a collective cultural inheritance. Their expressions do not merge into a singular voice; instead, they resonate in a quiet, harmonious dissonance. The central thread weaving through the exhibition is the question of displacement—how identity is formed, sustained, and transformed when one’s sense of place becomes uncertain. It asks: how do memories travel? And how do they find form in unfamiliar landscapes?

Tashi Druketsang initiates this dialogue with her series Fluid Tapestries, where acrylic colors flow and dissolve like fragments of a dream. Shades of sapphire melt into crimson, while amber flickers across layered surfaces, creating compositions that feel almost alive. Her canvases carry a rhythmic breath- echoing the subtle pulse of diasporic existence. She explored the life and vicinity where ever she travelled to and brought those experiences into her canvas. She views that everything is connected to each other whether it be with the living or the non living. The colors, patterns and expressions that she expresses in the canvas has a different aura when it comes to the exhibition. Being a self taught artist, she has been actively making art from the last two years. Her abstractions suggest that the self is constantly evolving, shaped by the invisible threads that connect individuals across time and space.

From this relational perspective, the exhibition moves into the contemplative terrain of Tenzin Melak. His works resemble quiet altars—layered, textured, and deeply meditative. Figures and symbols emerge and recede within his compositions, suspended between the earthly and the transcendent. Drawing from Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, Melak incorporates organic materials and fragments of lungta—prayer flags—into his canvases, embedding within them both spiritual resonance and the lived reality of exile.

His paintings navigate a delicate tension between aspiration and reality. Memories of childhood in exile surface subtly, embedded within layers that reveal as much as they conceal. Rather than offering fixed interpretations, his works invite viewers into spaces of ambiguity, where meaning unfolds gradually. Identity here becomes fluid and dispersed—an ongoing process shaped by both belief and uncertainty.

One of the visitors, Lea Taake states, ‘the paintings are done from the feeling and the mediums they’ve selected for the exhibition is praiseworthy as well. The four artists have tried to portray their feelings into their artworks and that’s what have moved me.’

The exhibition then turns inward through the work of Tashi Nyima, whose series Hidden Tales delves into the quiet interior landscapes of the mind. His figures, often turned away or suspended in stillness, resist clear definition. They are not portraits but emotional vessels—carrying states of being rather than fixed identities. In this ambiguity, viewers find space to project their own memories and emotions, creating an intimate dialogue between artwork and observer.

Nyima draws subtle inspiration from traditional thangka painting, yet reinterprets it through a contemporary, introspective lens. His compositions balance stillness with movement, suggesting lives in transition—bodies anchored in place while minds drift across invisible distances. Visible grids and layered textures reveal the process itself, emphasizing incompletion and transformation. Each canvas unfolds like a quiet story, never fully resolved, echoing the fluid nature of identity.

Completing this constellation is Choenyi Dolma, whose work introduces a tactile and deeply intimate dimension to the exhibition. Using thread, silk, and wool, she transforms material through repetitive, meditative gestures. Each stitch becomes a repository of time, memory, and emotion—a quiet act of care and attention.

For Dolma, beauty lies not in perfection but in multiplicity. Her works embrace contradiction, allowing pain and tenderness, rupture and continuity to coexist within the same space. Identity, in her practice, is layered and plural—shaped as much by inheritance as by lived experience. Through her delicate yet deliberate interventions, discomfort is not erased but softened, reconfigured into something profoundly human.

Another visitor at the gallery, Vincent had all but praises for the artworks. He expressed, ‘ the color patterns and the ideas that the artists have chosen for the painting are quite interesting. The daily lives of people have been aptly portrayed in their paintings which is very interesting for me. In one of the embroidery works that one of the participating artist have displayed the socks of lady from which the thumb finger is protruding outside. Such details are what really interest me in the artworks.’

Khorlo, true to its name, resists a definitive conclusion. Like a wheel in motion, it continues to turn—its rhythm shaped by memory, encounter, and time. The exhibition does not seek to answer the question of identity but to hold it open, allowing it to shift and evolve.

Together, the works of Druketsang, Melak, Nyima, and Dolma form an interconnected orbit. Each artist moves along a distinct path—through community, spirituality, introspection, and materiality—yet their practices converge in a shared meditation on becoming. In this gentle, continuous turning, Khorlo reminds us that identity is not a destination, but a process—one that is constantly being shaped, dissolved, and reimagined.