Drawn from the Wheel of Winds

Drawn from the Wheel of Winds is a collection of four 4x6’ Tibetan hand-knotted rugs that explores how memory lives within materials and making. Raised within a rug-making community in Nepal, I only recently began to engage with the historical and emotional weight these textiles carry. As a Tibetan designer, I examine pile weaving as a culturally embedded practice shaped by displacement, inherited knowledge, and evolving relationships to tradition. Developed in collaboration with my family’s rug factory, the project uses Tibetan wool and repurposed silk yarns to reimagine rug-making as a site of cultural continuity. These woven textiles are drawn from unseen forces: the force of exile, the movement of generations, the spinning of memory and time. They are not fixed objects, but moments caught in the winds of becoming—woven records of what is remembered, held, and passed on.

Tenzin Yiga Lama
textile
ARTISAN, HERITAGE, HISTORY, MEMORY, NATURAL MATERIALS

Tenzin Yiga Lama is a Tibetan interdisciplinary designer from Nepal, working with textiles to reflect on cultural identity. Her practice draws from diasporic experience and ancestral knowledge to hold craft as a form of cultural preservation.

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