(1985 - )
Born in Nepal, Manish Harijan studied Fine Art at Kathmandu University (BA, 2011), followed by a residency at Kathmandu Contemporary Art Center in 2012 and at the Centre for Culture and Development (CKU) in Denmark, in 2013. His first solo exhibition at Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu, in 2012, presented paintings that recast Hindu deities as superheroes. The exhibition was shut down on religious grounds, and the artist received death threats, court cases were filed and UNESCO issued a press release to support the artist’s freedom of expression. This led Harijan to leave Nepal for the UK to further his studies at Sheffield Hallam University (MFA, 2018–19), where he won the Dianne Willcocks Lifelong Learning award. His work has been included in group exhibitions at CKU, Copenhagen (2013); ROSL Gallery, London (2013); India Art Fair, New Delhi (2016); Weltmuseum, Vienna (2019); and Museum of Communication, The Hague (2019).
