KYTA
A TRAVEL AND ART EXPERIMENT
Monisha Ahmed
Co-founder and Executive Director - Leh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO)
Monisha Ahmed is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO), in Leh. She has spent over 32 years in the region, first visiting in 1987 when she volunteered at the Moravian Mission School and learnt Thangka painting at the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies. She then went on to do both her masters and doctoral degree in Social Anthropology, from Oxford University, with a focus on Ladakh. During this time she spent many years living among the nomadic pastoralists of Changthang, Ladakh’s high-altitude plateaux, researching their life with
special reference to their textiles and trade in pashmina. This was largely for her doctoral degree which later developed into the book Living fabric – Weaving among the Nomads of Ladakh Himalaya (Orchid Press, 2002), and received the Textile Society of America’s R L Shep award in 2003 for best book in the field of ethnic textile studies.
Since then she has written extensively on the region, first co-editing Ladakh – Culture at the Crossroads (Marg Publications, 2005), and collaborating on Pashmina – The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond (Marg Publications 2009 and 2017). She has published several articles on textile arts of Ladakh, as well as other parts of the Himalayan World, including four in The Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (Berg Publishers, 2010). She has also written on textiles in other areas of India including a chapter for The Arts and Interiors of Rashtrapati Bhavan – Lutyens and Beyond
(Rashtrapati Bhavan, 2016), and the catalogue Woven Treasures – Textiles from the Jasleen Dhamija Collection (Saffronart, 2016). More recently she was advisor for the Bhau Daji Lad Museum’s online exhibit We wear Culture for the Google Cultural Institute.
Monisha has curated exhibitions at LAMO: ‘Mapping Old Town, Leh’ (2013) and Baptist Coelho’s exhibition on textiles from the Siachen Glacier ‘thread by thread’ (2015). As well as Woven Treasures – Textiles from the Jasleen Dhamija Collection. Saffronart, 2016, and Between Land & Sky – Woven Gold From the Gyaser Tradition (2019). She was Associate Editor of Marg Magazine from 2010 to 2016.
As an independent researcher her work continues to focus on art practices and material culture in Ladakh. LAMO has supported many emerging contemporary artists and new forms of media. Her practice stems from the belief that culture is not merely rooted in tradition but is also open to change and innovation. And though change is inevitable, the past has to be acknowledged and understood.