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A large hanging textile work: three smudged cream panels above, and below them woven red and black bands with loose threads trailing down.This photograph on its own page

Shifting Landscapes

As the Lepcha language fades and the land erodes, Reppandee Lepcha weaves together paper pulp, rice paper, and hemp wool to ask: how do communities retain relevance in a shifting world?

Published 30 December 2025

This has finished

On view
12 December 2025 – 31 March 2026
Times
10AM to 6PM (Mon to Sunday) Till March 31st, 2026
Part of
Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26

Where

Vallabhdas Kanji Limited (VKL Warehouse)

Event venue · no 6/951, Bazaar Road, Mattancherry

You’ve just missed it — take it home anyway

The 2025–26 Biennale ended on 31 March 2026. The next is expected around December 2027. We made a book of all 72 exhibits, venue by venue, with the photographs — 76 pages, 9 MB.

We email you the book. Nothing else.

Shifting Landscapes: Reppandee Lepcha Weaves the Disappearing Language of the Rong People

Artist

Reppandee Lepcha (Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan)

Medium

Paper pulp, Rice paper, Hemp wool, Pugo reep (Oroxylum indicum)

A mixed-media textile installation hangs on a wall, composed of two horizontal sections. The upper section features three large, irregularly shaped pieces of aged, off-white paper or fabric with dark stains and faint markings, separated by sheer netting. Below, a central rectangular panel of tightly woven, light-colored material is flanked on both sides by vertical bands of red and black woven strips with long, loose threads hanging downward. The entire piece is mounted against a plain wall, with shadows cast beneath it.

About

Shifting Landscapes explores the tension between continuity and erasure. The work focuses on the diminishing language and culture of the Rong (Lepcha people) and the deeper loss of their living relationship with land and nature.

From historical displacement to environmental destruction, the community has been pushed into ever-shrinking margins. Now the land itself slips away—echoing the erosion of words, traces, and relationships it once held.

Weaving serves as the skeleton holding everything together. Traditional patterns gather fragmented parts, stitching them into provisional wholes. Scripts written with words once commonly heard are set against the dominance of other languages—highlighting linguistic disappearance while voicing urgent realities.