Just a few days ago, Gesang Yangla finished interviewing and documenting Tsering Dorjee, one of Xizang’s first-generation oil painters. The 77-year-old has painted the Potala Palace all his life and still paints to this day. She asked him, “After a lifetime of painting, have you found the answer you are most satisfied with?” The old man shook his head.

That simple “no” struck a deep chord with her. What Gesang Yangla hopes to achieve is to give voice to such reflections and bring the artistic creations unfolding on this land to a wider audience.

In 2018, she returned to Xizang from Columbia University in New York and brought “Self-Salvation”, the first solo exhibition by young artist Zelang Duoli, to Lhasa. As founder of hima hima Xima Art Space, initiator and chief curator of the Sweet Tea House Youth Art Season, nearly everything she has undertaken since then is an effort to respond to that very question.

Photo: Gesang Yangla (front row, third from left) with other members of the hima hima Xima team.

Gesang Yangla lived in Yadong County, Xigaze, Xizang, until she turned 12. Her father studied music, so art came naturally to her family. Still, that did not map out a clear path for her life.

She was admitted to Shanghai Gongkang Middle School after primary school, and later to Beijing No. 80 High School. In 2012, she enrolled in the School of Government, Peking University, as the top liberal arts scorer in the Xizang Autonomous Region.

Before graduating in 2016, the 22-year-old received an admission offer from Columbia University to study Arts Administration. In 2017, she embarked on study tours to the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands, visiting nearly all major museums and art galleries across these countries. She observed how art institutions operate and how the public build connections with art. The power of “being seen” also prompted her to reflect on local realities back home.

She graduated and returned to China in 2018. While still in the United States, she had already curated Zelang Duoli’s solo exhibition “Self-Salvation”. It marked the beginning of her curatorial career and her first chance to test the knowledge she had gained abroad within a local context.

In 2025, she earned her doctorate in Tibetan Art History from Xizang University. Her academic journey from public administration at Peking University, to arts administration at Columbia University, then to Tibetan art history at Xizang University, may appear disjointed, yet it follows an underlying thread: she has long sought a framework that bridges outside perspectives and local knowledge. Her ultimate goal is artistic equity, so that everyone can appreciate art and savor the joy it brings.

On October 1, 2021, Gesang Yangla officially launched the inaugural Sweet Tea House Art Festival, which opened at Xidelin Courtyard in Lhasa. Artworks were displayed across eight local teahouses including Dengshan Teahouse, Guangming Gangqiong Sweet Tea House and Lucang Teahouse. These sweet-tea houses were turned into unique “street art museums” distinctive to Lhasa.

Gesang Yangla left her previous workplace in 2023. She had long dreamed of running her own art space. That same year, she and her partner Dekyi Chodron each borrowed 150,000 yuan from their families.With the combined 300,000 yuan, they founded hima hima Xima Art Space.

She has seen countless people hesitate, peer through the entrance of art spaces, and eventually walk away. That is why she never seeks to elevate art out of people’s reach. Instead, she wants to bring it down — low enough for every ordinary person to reach out and touch.

“We focus on present-day Xizang and its art.” This is no grand declaration about a faraway land, but a commitment to the here and now: to bring art into everyday life, nurture mutual understanding between people and artworks, and let stories from Xizang grow out of ordinary life and travel onward to the wider world.

Reporter: Migmar, Yudron, Ngodrup Tsering

Translator: Ni Weijing

First Review: Liu Fang, Pan Lu

Second Review: Li Chengye

Third Review: Hu Rongguo