Savvy Contemporary: Garden of Ten Seasons

An art gallery with pink and yellow walls and a piece saying 'Nepal Power'

Köken Ergun and Tashi Lama, Nepali Power, 2022

LUX sends Contributing Editor, Samantha Welsh, to report on the opening ceremony of Garden of Ten Seasons at Savvy Contemporary in Berlin

At the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale an announcement was made at the Nepal Pavilion, that a collaborative initiative between Kathmandu Triennale, Savvy Contemporary, Para Site, Siddhartha Arts Foundation and Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF), with further support of Wellington and Virginia Sun Yee Trust, was going to take place.

A precursor to the Kathmandu Triennale (KT-2077), Garden of Ten Seasons engaged 40 international artists, aiming to investigate identity, cultural hegemonies and the politics of material. The exhibit aimed to connect different developments in the art scene in the South Asian region, from paubha painting in Nepal to ink in East Asia and barkcloth in the Pacific. The show discussed appropriate frameworks of understanding and bringing together these multiple aesthetic and cosmological lineages active today.

A gold and orange tapestry on a pink wall

Front: Sainchi Phulkari Textile, late 19th century
Back: Mary Dhapalany, Untitled, 2018, Pandanus mat
© Raisa Galofre

a group of people standing in front of a pink and gold wall

Opening of Garden of Ten Seasons at Savvy Contemporary, 2022, with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Aqui Thami, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Cosmin Costinaș, Hit Man Gurung, Elena Agudio, Karan Shrestha and Durjoy Rahman © Raisa Galofre