Amrit Karki (he/him)

As a visual and performing arts professional from Nepal, Amrit Karki has achieved international and national recognition for his thought-provoking works that interrogate the bridge between the ephemeral and the eternal and the formulation of the formless.

He was awarded the prestigious 2019–2020 UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Institute of Asian Arts Scholarship by the South Asian Foundation (SAF) at the School of Visual Art and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Pakistan. He was also awarded the 2020 Creative Young Artist Award in Nepal. The artist’s solo performance exhibitions include Breathing Through the Stillness (2022) at Nepal Art Council, and Undefiled (2021) at Beaconhouse University Gallery in Lahore, Pakistan. His work was also exhibited in South Korea at the Anyang Public Art Project (APAP7) 2023, Anyang, and at Fantasy Island 2023, Incheon. Amrit Karki previously exhibited at the 2019 Islamabad International Art Festival, the 2018 Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh, and the 2017 Kathmandu Triennale.

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In What You Have Given Me, I Set Free Forever, filmed in Kathmandu and shown at the Rubin Museum, Amrit Karki invites viewers to add a measure of dyed water to a receptacle from which it continuously drips on his head and spills over his body. Viewers enter the artist’s performance space, using his body to cleanse their minds and let go of what worries them.

The artist offers his own body, time, and breath as the surface upon which a work of art gradually forms over a day—every day—for five consecutive days. The colored water stains his clothes as a visual reminder of the things that daily pollute and burden the mind. As the cleansing waters collect in the tub beneath the artist, viewers witness the gradual accumulation of everything the artist accepts from them and sets free. The shirts displayed  in the galleries are from the performance in Kathmandu. The collection of discarded shirts signifies earthly burdens that have been cast off collectively by the artist and the participants.

Ritual cleansing is an important aspect of Nepalese traditions of worship, and this act is the inspiration for Amrit Karki’s durational performance. It is symbolic of washing away impurities and surrendering to the divine. Such rituals are regularly performed on objects such as the Four-Faced Linga exhibited in Gateway to Himalayan Art.

What You Have Given Me, I Set Free Forever was performed and recorded over five days, beginning September 17, 2024, at the Nepal Art Council Gallery, Nepal, and displayed at the Rubin Museum from September 19–October 6, 2024, as part of the exhibition Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now. It was co-curated by Marina Abramović, Michelle Bennett Simorella, and Roshan Mishra, and made possible through the Marina Abramović Institute.

This object from the Rubin Museum’s collection is presented in the Reimagine exhibition in dialogue with What You Have Given Me, I Set Free Forever, inviting new ways of encountering traditional Himalayan art.