Tsewang Lama: A Nepali Painter of the Deep Himalayas
Nyingba Four Tribes Tsewang Lama (Wang Lama / Tsewang Lama) was born on October 30, 1990, into a farming family in the Tibetan village of Nyingba Four Tribes (ཉིན་ཡུལ་ཚོ་བཞི། Nyin Yul-tsho bZhi), located in Humla District (འོམ་ལྷ།) of northwestern Nepal. Humla lies on the border between Tibet and Nepal, close to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, and is the essential gateway to these sacred mountains and lakes. As Picasso said, "Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do its bidding.
Mount Kailash: Tsewang spent most of his childhood in this serene land, which delayed the start of his urban education. Yet he became the village's first artist to graduate. Historical records state that Humla comprises the Upper (སྟོད།) Six Tribes, the Middle (སྨད།) Seven Tribes, and the Tsang (གཙང་།) Five Tribes; the Nyingba Tribe is among Middle Humla's four Tibetan villages.
A multi-hyphenate youth, Tsewang developed a love for art in his early years. After a few years at a boarding school in Kathmandu, he moved to India for further studies. Following meetings with mentors Sanjay Kumar and Baldev Singh, his chosen path became even clearer. In 2009, he earned first prize at the Himachal State Museum's All India Art Competition in Shimla, India. He subsequently finished his studies in Kathmandu and Chandigarh, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kathmandu University Art Department in 2014.
The Standard Times published an article titled "Beautiful as Truth" that profiles Tsewang and includes the following: "Tsewang Lama isn't extraordinary, but the Himalayan villages he paints are." It also states, "Tsewang is a shy boy, untouched by fame, profit, or the hype of galleries and exhibitions. Each of his paintings reveals a unique kind of boldness." Today, Tsewang's talents span multiple disciplines—he works as a painter, sculptor, designer, illustrator, traveler, and photographer. He harbors a deep passion for far-off places and the varied cultures he encounters there.
Culture and nature are the sources of his artistic inspiration. "Through my art, I share the beauty and diversity of the world as I see it," he once stated. In The Fading of Memory, Tsewang explores the struggles of those caught between the past and the modern era, recording how modern society shapes the lives of people today.
Through connection and experience, we learn tolerance and appreciation for others. Disappear. He mentioned: "I increasingly feel an urgent need to document the indigenous people deeply affected by urbanization and globalization— where traditional ways of life, ancient cultural practices, languages, and more are vanishing at an alarming rate." Industrialization and urbanization put numerous endangered species in nature at risk, while also threatening biological and cultural diversity and severely impacting societies with centuries of history.
Tsewang hopes to reveal the hidden narratives of the Himalayas through painting. Constant travel and learning have shown me that all people, for all their differences in faiths, practices, and tongues, are linked. When any group perishes, a piece of us dies with it. The disappearance of a culture erases its memories and history—an undeniable loss for what lies ahead. Through documenting these isolated communities, I aim to let others see precisely what is fading away.
For Tsewang Lama, a painter and photographer born in a Tibetan village in Nepal, the first longing of his fingertips for a brush cannot be dated; what is certain, though, is that his becoming an artist was no accident. He won first prize in the All India Art Competition in 2009 and then completed his intermediate art education in Chandigarh in 2010. As Susan Sontag observes in On Photography, "In essence, a photograph can never entirely transcend its subject, whereas a painting can.
In 2014, Tsewang earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kathmandu University's Art Department. Over a period spanning two years in Chandigarh and one year in Kathmandu, he took part in numerous art studio projects and group exhibitions. His professional work included serving as a photographer for GIZ Nepal, along with illustrating a number of books and magazines. His paintings were shown at the Chandigarh Government Museum as well as at various international hotels both in Nepal and overseas. That same year, he auctioned one of his artworks to raise funds for flood relief efforts.
To help fund protection projects in Nepal and the Himalayan region, he gave another piece to the Red Panda Network in 2015—an international organization focused on red panda conservation.