2026 Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize winner Pem Lham is a Bhutanese visual artist who contributes to Bhutan’s rich contemporary art landscape through her artistic practice, community engagement, and cultural initiatives in collaboration with VAST Bhutan.
Working primarily through painting and mixed media, Pem Lham creates poetic visual narratives that balance tenderness, humor, satire, and introspection. Grounded in Bhutanese folklore yet informed by contemporary feminist inquiry, her art creates a dialogue between cultural memory and the lived realities of women today.
For Pem Lham, winning the 2026 Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize enables her and other artists in the region “to think bigger and not restrict ourselves and our ideas, and be a part of the bigger narrative and take Bhutanese contemporary art to the global audience.”
The Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize was established to support living artists and recognize the work of innovative individuals who have made a mark in creative and critically relevant dialogues between Himalayan art and contemporary life.
Pem Lham is a Bhutanese visual artist and winner of the 2026 Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize, whose practice explores folklore, gender, identity, and collective memory. She holds a bachelor of fine arts in visual arts from Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan, and has been actively engaged with VAST Bhutan for more than 16 years.
Her work centers on “Molay,” a spirit girl from Bhutanese mask dance traditions, through whom she explores inherited narratives, women’s experiences, and contemporary identity. Her work has been exhibited across Bhutan, Nepal, India, Belgium, Switzerland, and Taiwan. Recent exhibitions include her solo exhibition Molay Moley (2025) at VAST Bhutan and She (2026) at Pristine Contemporary Gallery, Delhi.
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