Born in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1968, Tsherin Sherpa currently lives and works between California and Nepal. From the age of 13, he was trained in traditional Tibetan thangka painting by his father, Urgen Dorje. After immigrating to the US in 1998, he began to explore his own style, drawing on the visual vocabulary of thangka painting. His works offer an interplay and juxtaposition between sacred/secular, traditional/contemporary, and settlement/movement. Sherpa’s practice stems from his personal experiences within the Himalayan diaspora, as well as the nomadic history of Himalayan peoples. His experimentations with visual languages adapt, reimagine, and reappropriated identities, symbols, colors, and gestures to surpass their chronological and cultural constrictions.
