Home is a Circle

Film installation / work in progress

Around the eleventh century as the culture of pilgrimage began to emerge in Tibet, especially to India as the “holy land” of the Buddha Shakyamuni, the early pilgrims such as Götsangpa played a key role in projecting the northwest Himalayas as part of the “twenty-four” Tantricgreat seats (mahapīṭha). Remote Himalayan valleys such as Lahaul (Garsha in Tibetan) were said to be encountered by the Tibetan yogins on their way to Uḍḍiyāna in the Hindu Kush mountains, seen as one of the geographies where Tantric Buddhism originated. As the yogins physically traversed the Himalayas, mountains such as Dril bu Ri emergedas the abode of the dākinī orkhandroma, the feminine aspect of the Buddha, with local oral histories in particular revealing the role of khandromas in aiding their spiritual realisations.

Oral stories about thirteenth century yogis like Götsangpa are tales of his mystical encounters with khandromas in the vast expanse of the trans-Himalayan skies. For Lahaulis, the landscape continues to embody his presence, in what are seen as Götsangpa’s bodily impressions on rocks, stones and mountains—testaments of his magical union with khandromas, the skywalkers. Such non-linear spatial and temporal evocations about Lahaul’s “sacredness” equally draw from the shape shifting nature of the khandromas and their profound abilities to foresee personal and collective dangers. The Tibetan interpretations of Lahaul as Garja Khandroling, a valley enclosed within high mountain passes and one empowered by nonhuman and human feminine energies, have shaped indigenous notions of and about the landscape. And over the course of recent history, such situated categories have also been appropriated by colonialist and masculinist political ideologies to enforce “civilised” notions of culture, womanhood and morality. In contemporary times, this disjunction is visible in the centrality of the feminine in the spiritual sphere and the unequal social position of Lahauli women.

Home is a Circle is  is currently a one channel video installation (intended to be screened in a loop)  guided by enquiries such as how to frame a space where boundaries between the mundane and the spectacular, terrestrial and otherworldly, human and nonhuman continue to collapse? How does one represent the sacred omnipresence of the khandroma when her worldly utterances are so fleeting? How does the overwhelming presence of khandroma compel a Lahauli woman about her own invisibility? The installation engages with these questions through attempts at representing the non-human and human bodies that co-constitute the landscape. Emerging as an intimate reflection on circularity, it traces paths from where the body and the landscape depart and return to each other performing a kora, circumambulation, each time. 

‘Home is a Circle’ is part of Filming Lahaul, a cross media ethnography project initiated in 2015 aimed at critically building and facilitating collaborative visual research on diverse socio-cultural practices and processes of the trans-Himalayan valley of Lahaul, India. Over the years, Filming Lahaul has unfolded in the shape of long form articles, academic papers, visual essays, short documentaries, site specific installations, exhibitions, workshops and community based events. This  specific installation has been developed as part of The Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners (2025), a year long fellowship facilitated by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and supported by Royal Enfield. In December 2025, the installation was exhibited as part of “Journeying Across the Himalayas”, a ten days multidisciplinary festival at the Travancore Palace, New Delhi.

Kesang Thakur is a researcher and video art practitioner from the trans-Himalayan Lahaul Valley, in Himachal Pradesh, India. She is the co-founder of Filming Lahaul, a cross media ethnography project that engages localized responses to socio-ecological transformations in the region. She is currently a PhD candidate with the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. Her doctoral research examines state infrastructures in the Indian Himalayas, with a particular focus on the geostrategic Atal Tunnel and its role in reshaping human and non-human relations and ethics of care for the environment in Lahaul. Her long-form writing and collaborative academic work have featured on platforms such as Himāl Southasian, The Wire, Dialogue Earth, SAGE, and Roadsides.

Carlo Ghidini graduated in Disciplines of Arts, Music and Performance from the Faculty of Letter and Philosophy at the University of Padua, Italy. Thereafter, he obtained a Master in Documentary Practice at the Brunel University of London and a diploma in Interactive Documentary at the Cineteca di Bologna. Between 2011-2013, he was involved in the production and dissemination of independent documentaries with Magic Lantern Movies, Delhi. Since 2015, Carlo has been co-developing visual ethnography project Filming Lahaul, as well as engaging as a field producer and cinematographer for documentary productions. He has also authored on-site and virtual video installations in Europe and India commissioned by platforms such as the London Review of Books or those displayed in venues such as Bienno Borgo degli Artisti and Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation. Since the past seven years, Carlo has been collaborating with social cooperatives in his hometown in the Italian Alps to produce documentaries focusing on the assistance of persons with disabilities, and associations advocating the right to work for persons with fragilities.