Synopsis

Over the course of several wars in the 20th century, thousands of Gurkhas died or disappeared in foreign lands without recognition. Their sacrifices were often reduced by colonial powers to mere acts of bravery, objectified and decontextualised. The continued presence of Gurkhas even in postcolonial nation states reflects a colonial legacy of militarisation that obscures deeper struggles with identity, displacement, and estrangement. Drawing on Hit Man’s longitudinal cartographic inquiry into migrant aspirations and disillusionment, this session maps the deeply personal repercussions of extractive political and social systems. The keynote ends on migratory patterns of both human and non-human, based on the artist’s recent continuing research on birds.

About Hit Man Gurung

Hit Man is an artist and curator based in Kathmandu. His diverse practices invoke indigenous methodologies and epistemologies to reconfigure contemporary artistic praxis and interrogate the fabric of human mobilities, frictions of history, and failures of revolutions. While rooted in the recent history of Nepal, his works unravel a complex web of kinships and extraction across geographies.

Hit Man was one of the curators for 17th Biennale Jogja 2023 and Colomboscope 2024. He was co-curator for the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (2022), and Nepal Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2022) alongside Sheelasha Rajbhandari. He has also co-founded ArTree Nepal, an artist collective and Kalā Kulo, an arts initiative.

Find out more here.