Towards an Adivasi Futurism: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Subash Thebe Limbu is a Nepalese indigenous artist who works with sound, film, performance and painting. His work is inspired by future scenarios of struggle, socio-political issues, speculative fiction and the possibilities of resistance. Exploring his heritage as an indigenous person, Limbu has also written about the idea of Adivasi Futurism as a provocation for an entwined practice of art and activism. Drawing from folk stories, customs and ways of living in nature, he works with digital media to create narratives which collapse the often assumed dichotomy between “adivasi culture” and science fiction.

In the first episode of this two-part conversation, Limbu reflects on his interests in science and science fiction and how those ideas interface with indigeneity and the experiences of erasure and colonisation. Inspired by the philosophy of Afrofuturism as well as the movement for Indigenous Futurisms—which explore the developing intersection of oppressed and marginalised world cultures with technology—Limbu talks about an Adivasi Futurism. He proposes it as a theoretical framework through which artists, writers and other creative practitioners can imagine—and eventually realise—alternative futures for marginalised indigenous peoples and their cultures.

_{(Featured Image: Video Still from Parallax featuring Bhagat Subba. 2019. Digitally Rendered Video, Three Minutes Forty Seconds.)}

Interview with Anisha Baid, 11th December 2020.