Something you should know

For this latest session of Something you should know, meet Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung, co-curators of the Djodjakarta Biennale and organizers of the forthcoming Sydney Biennale.

Sheelasha Rajbhandari is a Nepalese visual artist, cultural organizer, curator and co-founder of the Kathmandu-based artist collective Artree Nepal (founded 2013). She is interested in exploring alternative and plural narratives through folktales, folklore, oral histories, mythologies, material culture, performance and ritual and places them as evidence alongside references to history and dominant narratives. Her long-term research projects and artistic practice often juxtapose these contradictions and synthesize the knowledge and experience that result from individual and collective discourses. Through her work, she frequently attempts to address simple but socially taboo subjects, emphasizing women's struggles and celebrating their resilience. Her recent work explores the current transformation of Nepal, once an important center of trans-Himalayan trade, into a changing geopolitical situation between the two emerging global powers of India and China. Rajbhandari is very attentive to the choice of materials and methods that correspond to her conceptual framework. She prefers media and materials that add meaning to ideas and have their own significance. With her partner Hit Man Gurung, she works as a cultural organizer on various projects, and both are co-founders of the artist collective Artree Nepal. Together, they also conceived 12 Bishakh - Camp.Hub Post Earthquake Community Art Project, a flagship project carried out in the wake of the 2015 earthquake in the Kathmandu Valley.

As a curator, she is known for her contributions to the Kathmandu Triennial 2077 and the first Nepal Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition - Venice Biennale in 2022.

Born in 1986 in Lamjung, Nepal, Hit Man Gurung has produced numerous unconventional art projects, group exhibitions and workshops. In 2011, he received the Australian Himalayan Art Award, and in 2012 was selected as one of the winners of the competition "Imagining our future together: A vision of a better common future in South Asia", organized by the World Bank. He was also selected for the Under the Bodhi Tree project, organized by WWF and the Lumbini Development Trust. Mr. Gurung holds a Master's degree from Tribhuvan University, and teaches at Tribhuvan University and other schools (Fine Art Campus, Bhotahity, Nepal).

Created in 2006, Something you should know aims to welcome contemporary art into an institution of higher education and research, by placing itself firmly on the side of the practice of today's artists and producers.

At a time when globalization is overturning the flows and polarities of the art world, giving rise to new forms of activism and new collective ambitions, questioning the space and forms of political representation or the constitution of new national references stemming from the communist world and decolonization, reinscribing utopia at the heart of collective projects, questioning majoritarian legitimacies and the blind spots of democracy : These are just some of the issues that the seminar aims to explore, by giving a voice to artists, curators, critics, heads of institutions and activists working outside France, who come to EHESS/FMSH to share their experience with us.

Seminar organizers

• Patricia Falguières, Centre Georg Simmel | EHESS-CNRS
• Elisabeth Lebovici, critic and curator
• Natasa Petresin-Bachelez | Cité Internationale des Arts