Between the sacred and everyday

Bhaktapur is all about ritual, resistance, and remembrance. Now a new generation of artists is exploring the city of devotees through art.

Balkrishna Banmala was a child deity dancer who performed sacred tantric rituals. But what many saw as divine honour for Banmala was a time stolen from his childhood.

“On the surface, it looked beautiful to be honoured with offerings and prayers,” Banmala tells us. “But behind the masks and the barefoot dances, we were children denied a normal life. No school, no shoes, no time to play.”

Banmala is now an artist and his canvases are part of the Chitra Katha exhibition at Siddhartha Art Gallery. The paintings blur the line between the sacred and the everyday: a masked deity riding a bicycle, a divine child licking an ice cream cone. Some of the images have sparked outrage in his own community.

“When I first exhibited these works, community leaders saw them as betrayal,” adds Banmala. “Some even tore up my paintings. A police complaint was filed. But I believe art must speak the truth even when it is uncomfortable.”

Incorporating circular motifs inspired by the Navadurga Jatra, Banmala weaves cosmological cycles into his paintings, saying, “In the cycle of life: Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Shiva destroys. My work reflects this cycle--today, tomorrow, and beyond.”

For Banmala, art has become a form of therapy, a step to healing the inherited burdens of tradition. “Children in my community continue to be worshipped at the cost of their dreams. I want them to have what I didn’t. My art is my protest, my hope, and my prayer.”

Altogether, 28 artists from Bhaktapur are exhibiting their works at Siddhartha Art Gallery with everyday stories of the city in the form of paintings, drawings, ceramics, printmaking, light installations. Many works use local materials like terracotta, wood and cement, grounding their expressions both literally and metaphorically in Bhaktapur’s soil.

Narayan Bohaju’s diptych Floating Hopes II offers a dreamlike view of urban chaos. Public vehicles float like lotus leaves. The visual texture almost resembles Studio Ghibli, and invites onlookers to romanticise even the most distressing reality, thereby offering some hope even in unexpected places.

In Echoes of Childhood Community, Bohaju returns to Bhaktapur’s spiritual core. A towering temple-like chariot teems with figures in communion: local vendors, families, fruit baskets, religious icons--anchoring a city where sacred and mundane coexist.

Meanwhile, Pooja Duwal’s series Custodians of the Ephemeral celebrates the beauty in the ordinary. Rendered in oil, her scenes capture fleeting moments of men in dhaka topi, elders sipping tea, neighbours chatting at street corners. Her remarkable works showcase unremarkable everyday scenes.

Reminiscing Memories by Srijan Ulak uses pen and ink to trace the fading outlines of Bhaktapur’s architecture and ancestral homes. His detailed work speaks to nostalgia, and the slow erosion that came with urbanisation and concrete.

For artist Anjila Manandhar, power comes from turning personal struggles into sacred strength. Her artwork often features skulls and divine figures but they represent her, she tells us. “The heads and skulls I draw are like those of Chamunda or Kali. But I gave that power to myself. I made myself the goddess strong, playful, and defiant. It’s how I motivate myself and heal.”

Manandhar’s works explore identity through surreal metaphors. One recurring image is of an ant with a human face. “Ants are everywhere. Tiny, sensitive, stepped on without notice. In many ways, humans are the same. We keep moving, but we rarely look down. Maybe if we did, we’d be more grounded.”

Sunflowers are another constant theme, and Manandhar explains that the blossoms always turn to the sun and feel like guardians that are always rising, watching, and protecting. Anjila’s art moves fluidly between strength and fragility, empowering viewers.

The exhibition also features Suraj Shilpakar, a master woodcarver deeply rooted in his family’s artisanal legacy. Woodcarving is his identity, and he strives to preserve the craft while constantly aiming to reinterpret it.

Shilpakar explores modern themes through painting, printmaking, and ceramics. His Baja Gaja series is a standout at the exhibition, a sculptural tribute to the role of music in cultural preservation. 

The piece is built in the tudal style. The struts represent support. He says, “It honours how youth and women uphold traditions through music. Today, music isn’t just a celebration, it holds culture together.” The work is a reminder that tradition can evolve, adapt, and inspire, while keeping its essence.

Each piece at the Chitra Katha exhibition is a meditation on heritage, belief, and identity. The lotus reappears as a quiet metaphor for resilience amidst chaos. The skulls, deities, and age-old rituals find their place beside evocations of temples, myths, and ancestral echoes. Themes of religion, tradition, mortality and divinity recur.

Bhaktapur’s artists offer their intimate stories, inviting onlookers to find personal resonance within the folds of collective memory. They are building new ways for future generations to remember their lives.

Chitra Katha

Siddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal Revisited

Until 11 May

Sunday to Friday 11AM-5PM

Saturdays 12-5PM