She Fell and Became a Horse

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Through painting, drawing, and text, this book explores the existential trajectories of young people in Nepal as they fight against domestic hierarchies and gendered politics in the context of their daily lives. Building on three women's real-life stories collected through long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it portrays intimate dimensions of domestic relationships and the ways these experiences lead to the construction of an idealised past and a dreaded – as much as sought - future. In so doing, the author approaches the characters' personal journeys as micro-processes of social change and moral self-making, which unfold through intersubjective processes.

Paola Tiné (Palermo, Italy 1991) is a practising artist and a researcher in social anthropology. As an artist, she is interested in the intersections between art and ethnography and how these contribute to understanding broader issues on what it means to be human. Her doctoral research involved in-depth data collection in Nepal (2018-2019), where she investigated domestic transformations and how these are influenced by and at the same time contribute to a local ethos among middle-class families in the Newar town of Bhaktapur. Her first monograph based on her doctoral dissertation Modern Dharma: Seeking Family Well-Being in Middle-Class Nepal is forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press. For her experimentations between art and social enquiry, she was the recipient of the 2018 Prosser Award for Outstanding Work by Beginning Scholars in Visual Methodologies', and her art book She Fell and Became a Horse: An Experiment in Ethnofiction, was awarded the 2023 'Rieger Award for Exceptional Graduate Student Work in Visual Sociology', both by the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA). Since 2024, she has been a Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology at the Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka (New Zealand), where she teaches Medical Anthropology and Visual Anthropology.

This work is an experiment in interpretative ethnography through ethnofictional means of representation. It asks the questions: Can social change be embodied? And how can we represent these processes visually in a way that further adds to our understanding of what it means to be human in contexts marked by accelerated social change? Through painting, drawing, and text, and with the accompaniment of local music, I explore the existential journey of young people in Nepal as they fight against domestic hierarchies and gendered politics in the context of their daily lives. By building on their real-life stories collected through long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I proceed to paint and tell other tales that originate from insights emerged from our encounter. I focus here on conflictual domestic relationships, on the experience of women in particular, on the support of their partners, and on the ways these experiences lead to the construction of an idealised past and a dreaded - as much as sought-future. In so doing, I approach these characters' experiences as micro-processes of social change and moral self-making, which unfold through intersubjective processes.

With its recent civil war, a devastating earthquake, the increase in outmigration, and the spread of education and media following a century-long dictatorship, Nepal is the ground of accelerated social change which can be vividly seen at the household level. Negotiating the moral basis of relations between self and family, and self and society in a context of rapid socioeconomic change is a pressing challenge for virtually all of the Kathmandu Valley's new and aspirational middle-class families. In exploring these dynamics on an artistic register, this book holds theoretical and empirical significance as it invites reflection on the intersections of ethnography, fiction, and art to enhance ethnographic knowledge of people's imagined world in the context of social change in Nepal and South East Asia more broadly.

The book is composed of three stories. The first two, The Blue Gem and Motorbikes and City Lights, narrate different existential perspectives, and yet also their similarities, between two different generations. The last story, Black Crows, is the longest one and tells the story of a woman who, as she claimed, transformed into a horse after falling near a fountain where she had gone to source fresh water. Black Crows is based more closely on a real story, which I analyse ethnographically in a paper currently under preparation. Nonetheless, names and details of the story have been changed, also to encompass my own perspective. While male perspectives are also portrayed, the three central characters of the book are three women: Beti, Sita, and Banira. The last name is a tribute to Nepali poet Banira Giri, whose works I am particularly attached to. At the end of the book, their voices become louder through three different creative responses: a poem, a song, and a dance.