By Danielle Gentry
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
The Towson University Asian Arts and Culture Center is using its exhibition to introduce students to a part of Asian art history that many may have never encountered before.
The exhibit Transformations features the work of Lain Singh Bangdel, a pioneering modern Nepali artist whose paintings trace themes of migration, political change, identity and home.
Through Bangdel’s work, the exhibit connects Nepal’s modern art history to larger global conversations about struggle, freedom and cultural change.
Joanna Pecore, director of the Asian Arts and Culture Center, said the exhibit was co-organized with Dr. Bibhakar Shakya, Bangdel’s son-in-law, who first brought the idea to Towson.
Pecore said the exhibit was a natural fit for the center’s mission of exposing the Towson and Baltimore communities to a wide range of Asian artists. She also noted that it stood out because the center had not previously hosted an exhibition on Nepal.
“I really wanted people to see how the history and the evolution of artistic expression in Nepal are connected to world history and the same kinds of struggles and issues that pervade cultures everywhere,” she said.
The title Transformations reflects both Bangdel’s personal artistic evolution and the role he played in shaping Nepali art.
Pecore said Bangdel’s style changed over time as he traveled to Europe, returned to Nepal, and lived through major political shifts. At the same time, she said his work helped transform the country’s artistic consciousness.
Born in Darjeeling, India, to Nepali migrant workers, Bangdel later traveled to London and Paris to study art before moving to Nepal in 1961. His life is described as one shaped by both mountains and migration, two ideas that remained central to his work.
That sense of movement is one reason the exhibit reaches beyond a traditional art audience.
Pecore said she helped organize the gallery so that students with different interests could all find an entry point. One section focuses on identity and city life in Nepal, another highlights the Himalayas and their natural and spiritual significance, and other sections center on democracy, freedom, migration, literature and colonialism.
For Pecore, that variety matters on a large campus like Towson University.
“So, I wanted to have something for everybody,” she said.
The exhibit, which runs until May 16, also highlights Bangdel’s importance beyond painting. The catalogue describes him as a writer and scholar whose work helped shape the poly literature and preserve the Nepali’s artistic heritage. It specifically points to his art historical publications, including Stolen Images of Nepal.
Pecore said visitors do not need prior knowledge of Nepal to connect with this exhibit.
She said the goal was to curate the art in a way that allows people to enter through emotion, story or visual connection rather than expertise.
“Art is human expression,” she said, adding that visitors can begin simply by finding one work of art that speaks to them.
Several art pieces stand out to Pecore as especially powerful examples of the artist’s legacy.
She pointed to an early painting of a woman holding her dead child during the Bengal famine as one of the most moving works on view, showing Bangdel’s attention to human suffering in his early career. She also highlighted Moon over Kathmandu, his bright abstract interpretation of the city, and a large painting about freedom displayed at the entrance.
Pecore said the exhibition also challenges narrow ideas about what Asian art looks like.
Many visitors, she said, may associate Nepali with only traditional religious forms. Showing Bangdel’s modern work opens a different perspective and pushes back against those assumptions.
Overall, Pecore said she hopes Towson students leave with a broader understanding of both art and the world around them.
“I want them to have a transformative experience in our gallery,” she said, “to learn something new, to discover something, to explore something that they’d never thought about before.”
The Asian Arts and Culture Center is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the College of Fine Arts and Communication building on the Towson University campus.