Mekh Limbu belongs to the Limbu/Yakthung community, and his work addresses the geopolitical fractures that stretch and shape Indigeneity. He uses archival material to address the need for intergenerational transfer of language, ritual and memory, while documenting the ramifications of Nepal’s labour migration industry on his family, underscoring the dismantling of traditional kinship structures. Limbu’s video and accompanying handloom textile narrate the story of the Yakthung Indigenous people and present a counter-narrative to their record in history. The artworks weave together ancestral voices, drawing from the spiritual and cultural canon of the Yakthung people, the Mundhum, to recount and account for the traumas of colonisation, displacement, estrangement and cultural fragmentation.

While the textile features various symbols, language and motifs relating to Limbu culture, the video combines rich oral tradition with contemporary soundbites: bootleg audiobooks, indie albums and films, family interviews and ritual chantings. The artist draws on more than a decade of research into migration, including that of his father to Qatar, to string together disparate moments of movement: a nomadic past, military campaigns during the British Raj, and more recent departures to the Gulf. It is a deeply personal and spiritual historiography of what it means to be Limbu, as well as Indigenous, today.