Subas Tamang comes from a family of traditional stone carvers, and also has a shaman ancestor who used woodblock prints for medicinal purposes. He incorporates carvings, engravings, diverse printmaking techniques and oral knowledge in his art to reclaim the often erased history of the Tamang Indigenous community. During the nineteenth century in Nepal, the Tamang people were subjected to extensive servitude and coercion by the state. This involved forced, unpaid work in porterage, paper manufacturing, gunpowder production and fruit farming, among other tasks. The rulers justified these atrocities by classifying the Tamangs as ‘masinya matwali’, a legally enslavable group. Consequently, this form of slavery led to the degradation of the Tamangs’ situation for generations, pushing many families into extreme poverty. Subas’s large woodcut prints, along with images of Tamang culture, such as the Tambas playing the Damphu drum, serve as a poignant reminder of those painful historical events.

Tamang’s animation is based on the Tamba Whyai story of creation as sung by Dhawa Wangel Moktan. This work details the Tamang song of origin that recounts the process of life within each cycle of creation. Poetry, history and ritual intersect in this video, while visually recounting stories passed down from Tamang elders.