About the Artist

Joy Lynn Davis is an artist and researcher from California, now based in Sweden.  She received a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002, and has studied the Tibetan and Nepali languages and Himalayan art history and religions.  During 2010-2015, Davis documented the theft of stone sculptures from the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal.  Her project “Remembering the Lost Sculptures of Kathmandu” (www.rememberingthelost.com) includes research about the origins and thefts of Nepal’s sculptures, an online database and interactive map of thefts, interviews with community members, photographs of sites, and a series of realistic paintings of the stolen sculptures reimagined in their original sacred sites.  Exhibitions of the project have been sponsored by UNESCO, the Swiss Embassy of Nepal, and the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics at Washington and Lee University. In 2015, Davis worked as a consultant to UNESCO, and contributed data to update Interpol’s international database of stolen art from Nepal.  She has lectured on illicit-trafficking of Nepal’s art at international conferences and in university courses in Nepal, Europe, and the United States.  She has been an artist in residence at Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Centre (2012-13) and the Santa Fe Art Institute (2008, 2009). Joy Lynn Davis is also the founder and president of the Himalayan Art and Cultural Heritage Project, a U.S. based non-profit working to protect the artistic and cultural heritage of Nepal and the greater Himalayan region by promoting public awareness and education, encouraging scholarship, supporting preservation efforts and the continuation of artistic practices, discouraging illicit-traffic, and facilitating voluntary returns of cultural artifacts.

For more information about Joy, her artist’s statement, and images of her public art, current, and previous work, visit www.joylynndavis.com.