Born in Thimpu, Bhutan in 1991, Zimbiri graduated from Wheaton College, Massachusetts in 2013, with a double major in Economics and Fine Arts. Her first solo exhibition, entitled Faces, was held at the Royal Textile Museum in Thimpu in 2015 and was the first solo exhibition by a woman artist in Bhutan. Inaugurated by Her Majesty the Queen Mother, Sangay Choden Wangchuck, Faces put forth the artist’s perspective on masks worn during Cham performances of Bhutan’s Tshechu festival. Through this body of work, the young artist commented on the constant masquerade of society, where temperaments shift, acting as coping mechanisms.

Traditional Bhutanese materials and imagery are an integral part of Zimbiri’s practice. The materials of Saa-tshen (pigmented earth) and Rhay-shing (hand-woven canvas) root her contemporary practice to the long-established conventions of art-making in Bhutan. Tigers, symbols of luck and prosperity, are repetitively incorporated into her paintings. In her second solo exhibition, Found Icons (2017), she portrayed tigers as icons of strength that ward off evil. A group of paintings made in 2020 were showcased during Asia Art Week by Grosvenor Gallery, London. Although her work has a traditional Bhutanese foundation, her approach is informed by 20th Century schools of Western art such as Minimalism, Pop, and Surrealism. Her art is a perfect Post-Modern synthesis: combining the local with global, the contemporary with the traditional.

Her first solo exhibition with Nature Morte in New Delhi, Imaginary Lines (2022), portrayed ferocious tigers, constricting and conforming their energies into box-like formations that fragmented and distorted the magnificent beasts with their iconic stripes. Subsequently, she has presented two solo shows, Tall Tails (2023) and From Emotions to Wisdom (2023) with the Tansbao Gallery in Taipei followed by another solo show, Endless Fortune:The Deities of Wealth and the Glamour of Mongolian and Tibetan Living Art (2023) at the Mongolian & Tibetan Cultural Center, Taipei.

Nature Morte has also presented a solo show of Zimbiri’s works at the Delhi Contemporary Art Week in 2019 and in a group show at the gallery in 2018, at the India Art Fair in 2017, and at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2018. Her most recent solo exhibition, entitled Me, Internal Conversations, was held at Nature Morte's Dhan Mill gallery in March of 2024.

Nidhi Agarwal

The Commotion, 2017