The <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/news/photoktm-5-s-visual-extravaganza">fifth edition of PhotoKTM </a>has come to an end. The theme of the annual month-long festivity this year was the natural world with a focus on co-existence and nature. There were over 60 participating artists from 16 countries. One of them was Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, a Mexican-British multi-disciplinary visual artist whose work acknowledges her indigenous heritage while exploring current ideals of progress. In 2022, Alcazar-Duart was awarded the Wayfinder Award from National Geographic, as well as a residency with Light Work through the Autograph Gallery in London. Her work has been exhibited and collected throughout Europe, Mexico and the United States in places such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Autograph Gallery in London and Wilhelm Hack Museum in Germany.&nbsp; Alston D’Silva, an educator, critic and media scholar based in Kathmandu recently spoke to Alcazar-Duart about her recent PhotoKTM exhibition. Read the excerpts: Alston D’Silva: In your earlier project Second Nature where you explored the biases in algorithmically generated representation of Mexican women, you have reflected that technology adopts language related to nature, “enabling it to sit comfortably in our minds”. &nbsp;More immediately in Ikamo-Tlalli (Earthless), your exhibition at PhotoKTM 5, you juxtapose an articulation of natural abundance with exploitation and extraction. Can you speak about your sustained engagement with this concept of the Anthropocene? How does the history of space exploration direct us into a trajectory of more climate altering activity? How does the site of your work, the island of Ascension, engage with the activation and suppression of indigenous knowledge and history? Mónica Alcázar-Duarte: The case of Ascension Island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, is particularly poignant when referring to notions of colonialism in science. It became an experiment for Charles Darwin, Kew Gardens (the Royal Botanic Gardens founded in 1840 that collected flora specimens) and the Royal Navy.&nbsp; In 1836, during his second Beagle voyage through the Galapagos, Darwin briefly visited Ascension. He is quoted referring to the island as a cinder. In 1847 his friend and botanist Joseph Hooker, who would become Kew Gardens’ director, agreed to engage in the shipment of trees, plants and some animal species to the island. This was all possible thanks to the help of the Royal Navy.&nbsp; This experiment, changing the island’s ecosystem, is the first terraforming action, a man-made ecosystem that was approximately 12 years in the making. Today the island has three different ecosystems: rainforest, a volcanic mountain range and a desert ecosystem, the rainforest being the main result of the terraforming process. Ascension is used today as a reference for what could be achieved one day by a human colony on Mars. The cultural mythology around this kind of idea exists as an attempt to reduce the gap between the fantasy of Mars as a second home to humanity and the reality of it.&nbsp; With Ikamo-Tlalli (Earthless) I seek to show how wide the gap is between the idea of bringing life as we have it now on Earth to Mars, and the reality of what this process would require. The balance of ecological systems as we have had them on Earth took 4.5 billion years to evolve. All the technology, ingenuity, and advancement of our civilisation will never catch up with natural processes such as this magnificent occurrence. But unfortunately, at this point in time we believe that we will become demi-gods and, in some corners, scientists are seriously considering ideas of geoengineering, terraforming, and so on. I see these approaches as the legacy of a certain attitude developed many years ago in which Nature is there to be probed, poked, and owned. As part of the colonial project that took place around the world, and that was enhanced by the Industrial Revolution, indigenous ideas of stewardship were supplanted by ideals of ownership and production, of efficiency and resources, towards Nature and our position within it. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/multimedia/reliving-analogue-photography">Reliving analogue photography</a>, Suman Nepali  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230331140324_7252e37e7855db7748a77bcd5712f48ddfda85c25398d59059a6b628d255b4fe.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20230331140324_7252e37e7855db7748a77bcd5712f48ddfda85c25398d59059a6b628d255b4fe" data-rendition-name="original" width="2500" height="1667" loading="lazy" alt="Shikhar Bhattarai"> <figcaption>Photo: (Photo: Shikhar Bhattarai)© Shikhar Bhattarai</figcaption> </figure>  Your work assembles the output of myriad research methodologies—artistic, archival, algorithmic, among others. For instance, you include a reproduction of stock crashes generated by AI bots overlaid on a photograph of yourself in an apiary outfit, and across from it is a grim archival photograph of a decapitated animal head presumably from a natural history collection. How does your work engage with rational systems of knowledge production across time? These interventions appear less straightforward than outright rejection, as you appear to make space for technological imaginaries to converse with ancestral knowing and emancipatory impulses—minus capitalism. Is that an accurate characterisation of the intervention your work attempts? What strategies does your work suggest to bring forward indigeneity and ancestral knowledge into the din of scientific discourse and technological confabulation? I think of my work as ‘work in progress’. The projects that I work on usually take years to develop. This is not only due to the amount of research that goes into the projects, but also because I acknowledge my evolving standpoint. I say this because I believe it is important to recognise that we don’t hold all the answers and that we are ‘in-process’ just as much as our work is. Having stated this, early on when I started work on the space exploration project, I realised that it was going to take several years for the project to unfold. It was quite likely that technology would change and my point of view towards it all would evolve. As I said, I evolve as the work grows. This is not a lack of commitment to the ideas, or even to making a statement. It is more like a philosophy of what I would like to see as humility towards the seeking of knowledge.&nbsp; In the case of the work shown during PhotoKTM, I decided to test the combination of themes that I have been working on since 2014. And one of these themes involves the use of language as a tool for decolonial thought. The use of Náhuatl (an indigenous language from the central part of México) comes at a time when I find out that my grandmother quite likely belonged to an indigenous community. I concluded this from a photograph she showed me, and a story she told me. The amount of denial I encountered in my family afterwards was what piqued my interest and prompted my now insatiable study of post-colonial and decolonial thought. This denial signalled something other than the question about my indigenous heritage. It indicated a legacy of erasure that has been internalised by us all in such a way that we think this is the order of things, this is the way things work. This disables any possibility for a different form of enquiry, or knowledge building, or shift in paradigms.&nbsp; In my case, the needed paradigm shift relates to ecological thought. What I mean is, if we have English as the language of Science, and Science as the language of the future, any other mode of expression, investigation, assertion, is excluded and diminished. It is rendered ineffective and outdated. This becomes problematic at a moment in time in which we find ourselves struggling to see a way through ecological crisis, not quite understanding that what we need is a different series of imaginaries for the future. These imaginaries, as I am calling them, must emerge from a different way of being and an understanding of the natural world and our position in it. I do not want to pretend that I have an answer, but I am clear that we can’t remain inactive. I prefer to participate, take part in conversations, prompt questions and seek answers together. Making this type of work is part of a process of mourning what we have already lost and what is not coming back, like the little rabbit encased in formaldehyde and ethanol as a specimen of study in the installation part of PhotoKTM. But it is also my way of using the energy that mourning brings with it.&nbsp; The future as we are living it now, with its ideals of progress and infinite growth, has quickly become the unsustainable fantasy that puts profit before life. We need schools, and clinics, and roads, but there must be a way in which we do not need a digital cloud that consumes 30 billion watts of power per year (New York Times, 2012). This equals the energy produced by 30 nuclear plants, or 6.4 million households in a year.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-way-we-were">The way we were</a>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230331140328_0791a0571546b89f338846d47cb5a4e5cda537d9ca2200d7612fe699e039abb9.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20230331140328_0791a0571546b89f338846d47cb5a4e5cda537d9ca2200d7612fe699e039abb9" data-rendition-name="original" width="3500" height="2333" loading="lazy" alt="Praveen Chettri"> <figcaption>Photo:Praveen Chettri</figcaption> </figure>  We’ve seen strategies of research experiments across many of the works in the festival. Would you say that this is the result of the complexity of the issues that you are compelled to explore as an artist? &nbsp; I think this is where I could mention the term that came out in our conversation the other day; techno-agnostic. I find how we arrived at this term so interesting because it was prompted by your question on techno-phobia and my resolution to make clear that I am not anti-technology, or anti-knowledge, or anti-exploration. These are all needed traits in humanity. Great advancements in medicine and care for people with PTSD have come thanks to VR for example. Palliative care on cancer patients has also helped many people thanks to image generated technological developments. Our empathy grows because of travelling. Our curiosity has resulted in great advancements in medicine. But I perceive there is a certain reverence towards ‘tech’; an almost faith-like attitude towards technology and its capabilities to bring answers to our pressing problems. This I find problematic, and so I find myself becoming techno-agnostic. I remain open to the evolution of technology, but I do not believe we should use it to offset the ecological issues we are facing today. We cannot think that we will store the DNA of all those extinct species with the goal of bringing them back one day, maybe on Mars, when it has taken billions of years for the right living conditions to exist the way they have existed up to now. We should not think that if we need to, we will geo-engineer clouds that will ‘patch’ the ozone holes once the condition becomes unsustainable. Why not instead figure out a way to rid ourselves of a business model dependent on our data, dependent on a gigantic digital cloud, dependent on profit over our life.&nbsp; I’m curious about the haptic qualities in the video installation, where the camera suggests the gait of a human subject. As a mode of conveyance, the video appears to pointedly contrast walking as a grounded inquiry on the surface of the planet to the bombastic theatre of space exploration. Can you elaborate on these qualities of the video? Relatedly, your work features a practice of self-insertion—you appear as a veiled figure in the video at Ikamo-Tlalli (‘Earthless’)—which suggests your own entanglement with the questions and issues you explore. The movement of the camera appears to be an extension of this expression of situatedness.&nbsp; Recently, right in front of our eyes, the natural world has revolted in such a way that we lack the emotional, sensorial vocabulary to understand it, nevermind expressing it. All of the sudden, there are ghostly presences, such as the melting icebergs, that come with a history of unheard messages, and interconnections, these presences are becoming testimonies. My use of statics and movement through film, photography and drawing, is my contribution to what I see as an absence of thought on current ideas of ecological thought. The self-insertion, as you are calling it, comes from a sense of erasure. Bodies, faces, presences like mine are not expected in certain spaces. People that speak and look like me, non-western, do not belong in spaces where conversations on space exploration, or algorithmic bias, take place. Furthermore, throughout my life I have been shown a reflection of people like me by outsiders who have claimed to know better about the world. Through a neoliberal globalised world, we are abstracted and generalised to a state where we have lost our own points of reference. By inserting myself within the spaces in which I have been told I do not belong I open a wound of absence, an absence of thought that we are all feeling now. This absence of thought is not a global thought, it is not an all-encompassing standard. This thought is not internationalist. This thought recognises difference as our shared humanity and change as the only constant. I am interested in that difference, in that contradiction, in that contested space. A space in which clean-cut answers do not cut it anymore, because we are living in a world that has revealed its wild ‘liveness’ in all its force. It is in this space where new imaginaries will form. It is in this space where ghosts like my great-grandma, my grandma, and myself, are revealed. These ghosts, for a lack of a better word, become presences, not apparitions.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/making-nepal-s-history-colourful">Making Nepal’s history colourful</a>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230331140328_2e69a76e1e47c365ced4a683bc4080767cfae90b0eaf15bd93c8f6ba2c7f2c17.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20230331140328_2e69a76e1e47c365ced4a683bc4080767cfae90b0eaf15bd93c8f6ba2c7f2c17" data-rendition-name="original" width="3500" height="2333" loading="lazy" alt="Samagra Shah 2"> <figcaption>Photo: Samagra Shah</figcaption> </figure>  You draw a figuration of a mountain-like or glacial scene that dramatically occupies one portion of the wall of the exhibition space. It has an urgent quality of authenticity perhaps due to the direct and intimate presence of the artist’s hand evident in its construction. Immediately, it evokes the notion of the unseen and buried, and that theme is amplified by the line work that visually resembles radio wave frequencies as it extends the piece outwards. Can you comment about its inclusion and how it appears to be related to the specificity of the site of the exhibition in the festival and in Nepal? &nbsp; During the pandemic I rediscovered my love for drawing I first learnt when I was studying architecture. But it is not until now, after the pandemic, that I feel I understand it a bit more. Drawing has become a way of understanding better how perception works. It requires a combination of observation and meditation, I draw best when I stop looking and I start evoking. I draw what I want to see, and so for PhotoKTM I decided to use one of the walls at gallery Mcube to draw a melting iceberg. Icebergs being this poignant topic of the Anthropocene, but also being such a monument for time and Earth’s geological history.&nbsp; The process of drawing is a process of apparitions, as it requires making the image appear. This is also inter-connected to the notion of self-insertion previously discussed. But it also relates to my visit to PhotoKTM, I wanted to make something that would only be possible if I was on-site. Drawing an iceberg requires the lines to be in some state of stillness that reflect the ice, but also of movement that may reflect the energy of melting. This energy is also inter-connected to the energy consumed by the digital clouds.&nbsp; Drawing this piece is a very moving process for me because it makes me feel that I am in the presence of something that in some years will almost be gone. Something that took almost 1.5 million years to form will be gone in a decade. The iceberg speaks to me about our inability to act on a crisis that was declared more than 50 years ago. This speaks of course of how change works, as an incremental process, but also to our lack of imaginaries on the face of this beautiful, overwhelming, alive nature that we are experiencing today. This monstrously alive nature with its floods, its earthquakes, its fires, its tsunamis, and its rising sea levels. With its disappearing species, with its uncontrollable forces that remind us of our brevity. What better way of communicating this than making a big drawing that will be erased as the next exhibition comes? Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/portrait-of-a-photographer-in-rural-nepal">Portrait of a photographer in rural Nepal</a>, Monika Deupala

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Anthropocene in Art

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe12659c7e80680e0da51ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="667"/><figcaption>Travellers cross the Narayani River at Pitauji Ghat, down the river from Narayanghat in 1967. Logs are piled across the river, which will be brought over to be hauled to India. Photo: DAVE HOHL/NEPAL PEACE CORPS PHOTO HISTORY PROJECT</figcaption></figure>The fifth edition of PhotoKTM is coming to town for a month-long festival of various lens-based work. From 25 February-31 March, photo.circle’s bi-annual festival aims to create resources for visual storytellers, researchers, educators, activists and other cultural producers to engage with social change.The theme this year is the natural world, and PhotoKTM 5 will have over 60 participants from 16 countries to highlight ‘non-human entities’, re-learn histories and pay attention, encouraging participants to imagine ways to co-exist and co-habitat this earth.The opening on 24 February at Bhandarkhal in the Patan Darbar Square will feature an immersive audio-visual performance, curated by Irina Giri and musical performances by artists Pushpa Palanchoke and Ser o Dúo, and the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory Choir, accompanied with visual projections by Phatcowlee.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe12679c7e80680e0da51fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="667"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe126b9c7e80680e0da520jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="667"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Chitwan National Park will see activities from 3-6 March. Indian filmmaker Amar Kanwar will teach a five-week course ‘Learning from Doubt’ on crime, politics, human rights, and ecology.PhotoKTM 5 will also have Bangladeshi artist, curator and teacher Munem Wasif, Swiss artist and writer Uriel Orlow, Indian filmmaker Sriram Murali, the Feather Library, Alana Hunt from Miriwoong country in the north-west of Australia, Mexican/British multidisciplinary visual artist Monica Alcazar Duarte, among others. Nepal Picture Library, and KTK-Belt Project which works on biodiversity preservation in eastern Nepal will also be presenting their work at the festival.<figure><figcaption>Photo: MONICA ALCAZAR-DUARTE</figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe126e9c7e80680e0da521jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="667"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe12719c7e80680e0da522jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="667"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>PhotoKTM also hosts a research residency, and this year it is being organised in collaboration with Jatayu Vulture Restaurant in Nawalparasi, and Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN).The South Asia Incubator for emerging and mid-career visual practitioners will allow participants to engage with global professionals and provide inputs to exhibit, publish and develop practices.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe12749c7e80680e0da523jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="800"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><h2>EXHIBITIONS</h2>As We Know Them: Bird Names in Tharu25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmKhapinchhenSungabha: Encounters in the Wild25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11:00 am - 7:00 pmDhaugalA Very Clear Picture25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11:00 am - 7:00 pmPatan HouseThe Skin of Chitwan25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmBahadur Shah HallIkamo Tlalli – Earthless25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmGallery MCubeDrawing From Nature25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11:00 am - 7:00 pmDhaugalMinmini25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmChyasal<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150240/63fe12779c7e80680e0da524jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2007" height="1000">The World like a Jewel in the Hand25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmBahadur Shah HallChhimeki Chara25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11:00 am - 7:00 pmChyasalSeeds Shall Set Us Free25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmGallery MCubeIndigenous Knowledge Portal25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmKhapinchhenFeather Library25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmChyasalWhat Plants Were Called Before They Had a Name25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmKhapinchhenSearching for the European Roller25 Feb - 31 March 2023 | 11am - 7pmNamkhaFestival attendance is free.  <a href="http://www.photoktm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.photoktm.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1677293192940000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3fkMCuwY0Tf44VdZelfbDx">www.photoktm.com</a>

PhotoKTM 5’s visual extravaganza

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd3209c7e80680e0d304ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"/><figcaption>All photos: TASHI R GHALE</figcaption></figure>Brown eyes meet green eyes in the icy crags of Upper-Manang. Tashi R Ghale is camouflaged like a commando, and keeps perfectly still, just 4m from the mother snow leopard and her two cubs as they feast on a Himalayan thar.Ghale knows that even though <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/trekking-to-save-nepals-snow-leopards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">snow leopards are shy creatures</a> and do not attack humans, a provoked mother can defend her cubs. Imperceptibly, he raises his camera and takes a burst of shots, the clicks muffled by the wind and din of Griffon vultures wheeling overhead.Growing up in Manang, Ghale found it difficult to discern the panje (as snow leopards are known in his mother tongue)because their spotted pelt blended so well with the cliffs they climbed.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd3279c7e80680e0d304bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">It is still difficult to catch a glimpse of the endangered Himalayan big cats, but Ghale has since trained himself to track them. He has had close encounters at least 30 times since first photographing them in 2006 and this has earned him the moniker, Snow Leopard Whisperer.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd32b9c7e80680e0d304cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="109">“I know the terrain in Manang like the back of my hand,” says Ghale, showing us around his exhibition, ‘Melting Paradise’ that uses his photographs of snow leopards over the years to highlight how <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/satellite-tracking-snow-leopards-in-nepal-to-study-climate-impact/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate change is impacting the Himalayan habitat</a>.In Manang, like elsewhere in the Himalaya, the glaciers that drain the north slopes of the Annapurnas are shrinking and the snowline is receding. The Gangapurna glacial lake was expanding until it got swallowed up in sediment after a flood last year -- also depicted in Ghale's photographs.Snow leopard photography got some bad press recently with photoshopped images by an American trekker ostensibly taken in the Everest region.But genuine Nepali field biologists like Tashi R Ghale know how difficult it is to get a good shot, and the reward in terms of personal fulfilment.The careful patience of a wildlife photographer shows through Ghale’s work. In Lone Tree II he combines six shots to create an expansive panorama that immerses the viewers in the wilderness habitat of the snow leopard.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd32d9c7e80680e0d304djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2167" height="1000"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd3329c7e80680e0d304ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2156" height="1000"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd3369c7e80680e0d304fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3600" height="2400">Ujen Norbu Gurung, the curator of Windhorse Gallery that is exhibiting ‘Melting Paradise’ says he immediately recognised the importance of Ghale’s work: “To talk is one thing, but to show is another. Tashi’s exhibit does just that.”The exhibition includes photographs of snow leopard prey from Dolpo and Humla as well as the predator in the wilds of Manang and Mustang.The Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) is in the IUCN’s global Endangered C1 red list with only 300 to 500 left in the wild in Nepal. Globally, there may be up to 7,000 left, but these populations are threatened by poaching and habitat decline due to climate change.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd33a9c7e80680e0d3050jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2492" height="1800"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd33f9c7e80680e0d3051jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1667" height="1000"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd3439c7e80680e0d3052jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">“Being the top predator, the snow leopard is an indicator species of the health of the Himalayan ecosystem,” says Ghale, and that is the biologist in him speaking.With global warming, he says, the tree line is creeping up the mountains, and this means the snow leopard habitat is slowly being encroached upon by competing common leopards of the lower valleys. Human disturbance with new roads and settlements are also driving away the snow leopard.“A snow leopard is needed for every 150 blue sheep to cull their wild population and reduce pressure on the grasslands,” explains Ghale. A decline in snow leopard population will also affect Himalayan vultures which clean up the carcass that the cats leave behind.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd3489c7e80680e0d3053jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1071" height="1500"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100128/63bfd34c9c7e80680e0d3054jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">Tashi Ghale and his team employed his award-winning camera-trapping techniques to conduct a census of predators and prey, as well as employ a team of observers to calculate the population in blocks. Ghale reckons there are approximately 2,200 blue sheep in Manang alone. Snow leopards are studied <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-leads-in-snow-leopard-study/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">most intensively in Nepal</a> and there are signs cat numbers are increasing in some pockets despite the threats.Besides snow leopards, Ghale’s camera traps have led him to discover new and lost Himalayan species like the Pallas Cat and the Himalayan Grey Wolf of which there are said to be only 50 remaining in Nepal. In fact, the Pallas Cat has been renamed Tashi Cat to honour his discovery. Ghale founded the Third Pole Conservancy and has contributed to the Destination Manang eco-tourism campaign.Tashi Ghale's father had taught him to fear the panje, which would often kill livestock and leave paw prints near the family home. Today, rather than fear the animal, Ghale is in awe of them.He teaches secondary students in Manang to set up camera traps and <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Studying-Cat-Scat,3559" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recognise snow leopard droppings</a>. He says: “Just like we have distinctive fingerprints, snow leopards have individual spots. Recognising individual snow leopards is the first step in co-existing with them.”

Snow leopard redux

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237b29c7e80680e0c7345jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1536"/><figcaption>Photos: SUMAN NEPALI</figcaption></figure>‘Colors of Shared Dreams’ at Nepal Art Council is an act of transference, most notably of the millennia-old traditions of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/vibrant-mithila-art-thrives-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mithila art and artists</a>, their heritage, to paper.The key theme here is the dreaming, and 51 women artists give voice to the vision of their lives, trials and tribulations, and dreams.Mithila art is most recognisable by its traditionally drawn, two-dimensional figures adorning the walls of homes in the ancient Mithila kingdom that spans present day southern Nepal and northern India.The origin of this singular art form is rooted in the legend of King Janak who had his subjects paint the walls of their homes to welcome Lord Ram when he came to ask for his daughter Sita’s hand in marriage.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237b59c7e80680e0c7346jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1536"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237b99c7e80680e0c7347jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1536"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>Mithila paintings then were done at weddings, festivals and feasts using flour, clay and cowdung. The artists were mostly the women of the family, and as the art evolved, the paintings became more than a way to beautify homes — they provided women a creative outlet to tell stories of their lives.Then, 30 years ago, the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/colour-play-mithila-art-janakpur,796" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Janakpur Women’s Development Center</a> helped to introduce a new medium for this art — paper — in a drive to keep this tradition alive and also encourage women to gain financial independence through Mithila art.Now, ‘Colors of Shared Dreams’ traces this movement in history and form, keeping intact the core values, style and aesthetics of Mithila art, to also include ceramics, mirrors and woolen figures.In sections, ‘Colors of Shared Dreams’ showcases the personal stories of the artists with the dance of the natural life, elephants, bulls, fish and peacocks, adorning the geometric frames. It also serves as a commentary on society, like its reflection were mirrored on a canvas.Read also: <a style="font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: 0.15px; background-color: #ffffff; outline: 0px;" href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/nation-bhaktapur,597">Bhaktapur’s Mithila influence</a>, Bhaskar Koirala<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=8294#.YxLqIc9BxpS">Mythic Mithila</a>, CK Lal<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237bc9c7e80680e0c7348jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1536"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237c09c7e80680e0c7349jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"><figcaption>Photo: ARIA SHREE PARASAI</figcaption></figure>This transition, or progress, is perhaps more conspicuous in contemporary and experimental feel of the later pieces that still stay true to the unique style and technique of Mithila art: characters facing sideways, elongated almond eyes, expressive hands and the tiered canvas.By depicting the many aspects of daily life, from taking care of children to cooking, cleaning, looking after older family members, the paintings bear the hallmark of the heavy workloads imposed on women — work that is often neglected and undervalued by men.For instance, the ghumto in one artwork seems to represent the restriction on a woman to only perform her household duties. Another painfully highlights the abuse in relationships. How may a caged bird still sing?However, dreams are boundless and in the art one finds comfort, inspiration, drive, and the promise for a better future — both for the artist and viewer.The artists see themselves not just as being confined to the house but in powerful positions, women <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/modern-mithila-art-that-bares-injustice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">taking control of their lives</a> and destinies.One painting depicts a woman raising her children independently, another shows a working professional. Migration has led all the men out of their homes to the Gulf or elsewhere, and in one painting, women break out of the domestic drudgery to learn and express their skills.They drive tractors and are literal breadwinners now, while others pilot airplanes and spaceships. The sky is no longer the limit.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237c39c7e80680e0c734ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1536"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131140/637237c69c7e80680e0c734bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1536"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>Yet, there is still that haunting voice lingering, one that pauses and reminds us that while it is not all gloom and dark, it is not all sunshine and rainbows either.What makes the artworks distinct is that very voice trying to bridge the vast realm of possibilities with the much harsher reality. Where does tradition fit in the belief systems of today? Can we be truly modern and progressive unless we ditch all that tethers us to the past? The voice prods and ponders.In their frank depictions of the struggles in a patriarchal society, the paintings are relatable and striking. Here is the struggle shared collectively by the artists, women and dreamers trying to break the mould. The art highlights the problems, but it also shows the resilience to fight.Says Sheelasha Rajbhandari, coordinator of the exhibition: “It is very empowering to see all these <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/how-art-empowers-nepals-women/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">women coming together and working together</a>. Mithila artists do not get the acknowledgement they deserve, especially individual contributions by women.”Colours of Shared DreamsNepal Art Council, Babar Mahal2 – 5 September 202210AM – 6PM

The dreamscape of Mithila art

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/637234099c7e80680e0c4911jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="2348"/><figcaption>Photo: ASHISH DHAKAL.</figcaption></figure>Siddhartha Art Gallery is once again alive with a vibrant colour palette, meticulously textured on canvas, depicting stunning expressions of devotion and dedication to art, inspiration and shakti.Renowned <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/review/Manandhar-fourth-exhibit-Nepal,2641" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">artist Kiran Manandhar</a>’s latest show ‘Samarpan’ – his first in four years – adds a delectable frenzy of red, orange, blue, black and white to the space. The gap in between the canvases sit like columns or bars, as though the frames were each a window and the viewers were staring directly into the eyes of providence.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/6372340d9c7e80680e0c4912jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="654"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/637234109c7e80680e0c4913jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="621">Photos: SAGAR MANANDHARIt is immediately difficult to group these artworks in a single genre. The softer lines and sharper angles are balanced by almost distinct faces. The curves of eyes, lips and limbs are bracketed by amorphous flames and shadows. There is a certain vagueness about the paintings – like the waves and ripples one sees in rivers or the sea – and the deities, Kali, Brahmayani, Kumari, Vaishnavi,  Ganesh, Seto and Rato Machhindranath, look abstract enough, but Manandhar will not relent so easily.“I am like a bird,” he says sitting under a parasol outside the gallery, as a sparrow skips across the courtyard paved with bricks on to a nearby bush. “I don’t make art saying one style or another, I like to hop from one branch to another, from one tree to another."Manandhar jokes that birds do not need visas to fly around. This desire for no restriction, to dissolve borders (at least in art) is strikingly conspicuous in ‘Samarpan’. Stylistically diverse, the paintings and a couple charcoal drawings even transcend philosophies and the various global schools of art. Influences of the European masters, for instance, blend in with the traditional Nepali figures, iconography and style.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/637234139c7e80680e0c4914jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3976" height="2352"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/637234179c7e80680e0c4915jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2523" height="2478"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Nature and light also create an overall dream-like impression. Perhaps this ever-moving effect produced may be explained by Manandhar’s own drive to understand what art is. He is not being coy when he candidly admits, “Even after all these years, I still don’t know what a painting is.” This admission sums up his oeuvre.In fact, it is also an expression of the phenomenological conundrum: can one ever truly understand a concept or craft absolutely? Perhaps when one knows what painting is entirely, one does not need to paint anymore, but Manandhar has no intention of stopping. He describes the itch to make art, even at odd hours and places: working to figure out, to develop one’s skills and understanding:“I cannot stop,” he says, “My wish is to paint, to take Nepal’s name everywhere.”An evidence of this is ‘Samarpan’ which may appear at the outset to be very different from what the general public has come to take Manandhar’s modern and abstract works in the past. Abstract art, after all, has roots in indigenous and folk art.There is much variety here and the paintings do not want to be tied down to a particular adjective or movement. They are themselves in motion instead, to show the world and other artists, especially young ones, just how much there is to do.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/6372341b9c7e80680e0c4916jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="2279"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>‘Samarpan’ is the fruit of labour of four year and a couple paintings go far back as 2016. Much of the work was made during the Covid-19 pandemic and the title refers to  the dedication, the offering made to art, to inspiration, to the many artists who were compelled to give up by the pandemic and the constraints it invited, and to Nepal which Manandhar so lovingly calls ‘devbhumi’ – land of gods.To call them patriotic or nationalistic would be missing the point, for this presupposes borders which Manandhar wishes to bring down. While the gods depicted are Nepali in essence, the art is an homage, a look towards the past and the traditions. It is also a representation of a spiritual landscape and the power of divine inspiration. After all, who can traverse boundaries and partitions as easily as the gods?<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131124/6372341e9c7e80680e0c4917jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="3008"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>“<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/art-for-a-cause/">Artists have to be sensitive</a>,” he adds, “We have to be observant and thoughtful.” But he admits it is not easy being one. Many artists, he says, especially young, are compelled to give up because there is <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=6263#.Yvy_xH1ByJB" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">no immediate ‘sound and effect’</a> result in art.He recalls speaking to other artists who are now abroad and no longer painting, who lament the lack of support and opportunities in Nepal. “One works for as long as one can,” he says. “Which is why a good support system is necessary that brings together artists, educators and patrons.”SamarpanBy Kiran ManandharSiddhartha Art Gallery.Baber Mahal RevisitedOpen 11:00AM – 5:00PMTill 24 August 2022.

Ashish Dhakal

Art for art's sake

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131120/6372333a9c7e80680e0c48d0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3264" height="1472"/><figcaption>Photos: ROSHAN MISHRA</figcaption></figure>Among the many legends about the Boudhanath Stupa, one involves a poor poultry keeper Jhazima and the buffalo skin.Boudhanatha is in fact the Sanskritised Panchayat-era renaming of the chaitya which was originally called <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-temple-by-another-name/">Khasti Mahachaitya</a> (‘great stupa of the dew drops’). However, the chaitya had another name too according to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition –– the Great Jarung Kashor (‘Let it be done, Slip of the tongue’) Stupa.Many years before the birth of the Shakyamuni Buddha, Jhazima, lived with her four sons in the village where Boudha sits today. After the demise of the Kasyapa Buddha, she petitioned the king to grant her land the size of a buffalo’s skin to build a stupa and inter the Buddha’s remains. The king, thinking it would be a measly piece of land, gave her permission.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131120/6372333d9c7e80680e0c48d1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>However, Jhazima carefully cut the buffalo skin in a long strip, like a rope, and circumscribed a larger area – where the great Boudhanath Stupa stands today.This symbol of devotion quickly took on a political significance, as the wealthy people of the country were humbled by Jhazima’s faithful act.If a poor woman like her can build a stupa of such magnificence, they thought, they would have to build shrines equal to the mountains.“Stop the building,” they implored the king: “If this construction continues, then each and every one of us will be harshly criticised.”But the king would not hear of it. “This poor, single poultry-woman, through gathering earnings from raising chickens, established her four sons born of four fathers as respectable householders. Not only that, with her remaining wealth she builds a stupa such as this. I thought this to be truly amazing, and so the words <a href="https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/ngakchang-shakya-zangpo/great-history-of-jarung-kashor-stupa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/ngakchang-shakya-zangpo/great-history-of-jarung-kashor-stupa&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1660101181265000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1wvhhCg-Bb6IhKdfptWV4l">‘Let it be done’ (jarung) slipped from my tongue (kashor)</a>. Kings speak but once!” he said in response.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131120/637233409c7e80680e0c48d2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1750" height="1055"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>This charming and extraordinary story is the subject of Object in Focus #5: Invocation at the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TaragaonMuseum">Taragaon Museum</a> situated next door to Boudhnath itself by contemporary visual artists Koka Vashakidze from Georgia and Alicia Junissaliyeva from Kazakhstan and curated by Roshan Mishra.At the centre of the room is a dark-coloured rope-like object spiraling – almost like a dizzying solar system, with what looks like a vague triangle standing in for the Sun – and surrounded by a rectangle of red ropes.But as one walks around, observes the work with an unfaltering gaze, the circle of the base quickly stands out. Then, with a little change in the angle, one can imagine a dome rising from it, followed by the ever-watching eyes and the finial.Here is the Boudhanath Stupa, translated, stripped down to its backbone – an abstraction. Like a cosmic bridge, it brings together the myth and the monument, looking both ways into the past and present.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131120/637233439c7e80680e0c48d3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4000" height="1800">All this may not be entirely conspicuous at first, but when one realises that the whorl is in fact real buffalo skin, the pieces fall in place. The rectangle outlines the block of land upon which the Mandala sits today. Take a step back outside the building and the doors represent the streets opening around the complex.The artists spent several weeks in Boudhanath, measuring the circumference of the stupa. Since animal skin is not permitted inside, they used the red rope for the purpose. People would come and watch them at work, perhaps wondering what they were up to. But the story of Jhazima, Vashakidze believes, was one of undefeated courage and creativity.Jhazima defied expectation, says Vashakidze. And instead of just putting the skin on the ground, she cut it in narrow strips to cover more area, demonstrating her boundless imagination. “And the king in the end has to say, ‘No, she has to continue making the stupa’,” he adds.Vashakidze, whose extensive contemporary body of work ranges from site-specific pieces to media installations, sees this as the moment when the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, are equal – because one woman with devotion for the Buddha stood up against the system and built an unprecedented monument, anticipating perhaps even the Shakyamuni.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131120/637233479c7e80680e0c48d4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="750">The artwork, in this sense, is an invocation to memory, to history and to Jhazima. Along with Junissaliyeva’s experience in healing and energy exploration, the trio of the artists and curator Mishra has created a poignant piece that is equally contemplative and dramatic, reminding us that despite the overwhelming restrictions – political, social, professional – and widespread philosophical, spiritual lethargy around us, we can still create what we want to, for the realm of possibility is boundless.Says Mishra: “I think it is a brilliant notion to sit with one object, one narrative.” This has much to do with the fact that the viewers can spend time with this echo from the past under an extended spell.Leaving the exhibition, one is filled with a striking desire to visit the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-stupa-of-a-million-dewdrops/">Boudhanath Stupa</a>, where the remains of Kasyapa Buddha are believed to be entombed, to compare, to recall. There too, prayers and invocations from all around bounce off the white dome and fill the air with sweet music, as though the voices of good will have never ceased and promise to echo into the future – in the same way that Object in focus #5: Invocation is an echo itself, of the enduring legacy of Jhazima.The artwork will also travel to the Tbilisi Triennial in Georgia in October 2022.Object in focus #5: InvocationBy Koka Vashakidze and Alicia JunissaliyevaCurated by Roshan MishraTaragaon Museum,BoudhaOpen 10:00am – 5:00pmTill 18 August 2022.

Echoes of myth and monument

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111128/6372185f9c7e80680e0baa3bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="1334"/><figcaption>"The old man with young hands iii", 2019, Pen and ink on paper. Photos: MONIKA DEUPALA.</figcaption></figure>Sitting cross-legged in the dappled light under a tree outside the Siddhartha Art Gallery, his hand resting on a knee and wearing a black baseball cap, Samridh Mukhiya says, “I am a conceptual artist.”Inside the gallery the walls are lined with canvases in which Mukhiya has sketched pieces plucked delicately from his consciousness. Black ink on white fields give the impression of freshness, the spaces between the lines are mysterious and inviting with leitmotifs: bubbles, wells, trees, machines spewing smoke in the air, geometric shapes, strings.Born to artist Tek Bir Mukhiya who is renowned for his cover designs for many books by Sajha Publications – such as Parijat’s Shiris ko Phool and Devkota’s Muna Madan – Mukhiya, 35, admits, “I tend to use metaphors a lot.”Indeed, the artworks in the exhibition range from representations of quantum physics to political allegory, from mental health to the zodiac. And the result is as diverse as it is concise, without a hint of self-indulgence – even in the surreal Things I am grateful for, which was completed in 2018 as part of the series Mantra.A giant oval face with closed eyes is supported on both sides by two hands. The face is sliced like a clean loaf of bread, but the face is unflinching and content. More hands, bonier, hold it up from below: one clutching withered flowers while another appears to be pulling at a loose fabric of skin.But the drawing is not violent, representing instead people who have had presence in Mukhiya’s life.“I wanted to show how, even with their own problems, people hold on to us and support us,” explains Mukhiya.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111128/637218629c7e80680e0baa3cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="2000"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Elsewhere, a humanoid machine, complete with a dizzying assortment of cogs and wheels and four legs, looks at itself in a mirror, while its other hand carries a sleeping child.Mukhiya explains that this is simple thought exploration of collective consciousness: “I wonder if in future humanity, instead of evolving, transfers its consciousness onto machines.”The new pilgrim (2012) is more than a sci-fi study: it is also a commentary on present society where humans are encouraged to emulate machines and be mechanical and efficient.Apparatus (2019), a charcoal on paper explores the deficiencies of systemic rote in education. In what looks like an old, black-and-white class photograph, students and teachers sit in rows, dressed in blazers. A spool of thread twists around them, like prison bars.But here’s a twist: the students have nails and screws instead of heads. The heads of the teachers are hammers. This is a haunting piece that speaks for itself.At once spiritual and scientifically curious, Sapana (2015) is reminiscent of the films by Terry Gilliam where the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred to the extent that one seamlessly blends into another. A sleeping figure’s mind wanders in fragments to a dreamscape as a gust of wind blows a flurry of leaves that loop around the canvas before finally settling on another tree at the centre.So much is happening. In the right-top corner, a recently dispossessed bird takes flight with its eyes set on a floating well. A door opens as a cloud of smoke – or are they waves? – billow in the background. Bubbles fly about in silence, like atoms or little pockets of the universe.Mukhiya explains, “The physical universe outside us is infinite, we can see only a small part. And if we pause and look within, we can see that the universe in us, which is our consciousness, is just as vast and endless.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111128/637218669c7e80680e0baa3djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1131" height="1750"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Mukhiya’s cerebral work is a testament to his lifelong fascination with life and the interaction between our consciousness and the socio-cultural stage. SAPANA is his 15th show overall and he is not trying to show life the way it is, giving shape to a creative process influenced by discourses on mental health, multiverses, memories. He was most recently part of the 'Crème de le Crème 2020' juried exhibition by Visual Arts Guild of Frisco in Texas.“I think a lot, no matter where I am or what I am doing,” the artist confesses. “And I do not draw or paint to simply draw or paint. I look for a story, an idea, I create narratives, some of which take years to incubate until the right form appears.”SAPANA is the result of this meditation, an explosive mix of strangeness and calm, like the notion of cosmological singularity or the Big Bang.SAPANAby Samridh MukhiyaSiddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal RevisitedMonday - Friday: 11am -5pmSunday: 12pm - 5pmTill 24th May 2022

The imaginarium of Samridh Mukhiya

<figure><img width="2419" height="1613" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c8b9c7e80680e0b7877jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Krishna Bhakta Dangol, "What makes us fight", Acrylic on terracotta. All Photos: MONIKA DEUPALA.</figcaption></figure>There is a widely circulated image of King Gyanendra taken at his <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/if-birendra-was-alive-nepal-would-still-be-a-monarchy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">post-royal massacre</a> coronation in 2001. The golden throne is visibly aged, chipping at the base. Gyanendra is sombre as he looks ahead under the crown, his hands clasped, his left leg resting upon the red velvet hassock.Perhaps it is to do with the camera or the weather,  but the image looks cooler, taken during a pre-monsoon rain.A rendition of the same image looms large in the gallery at Yala Maya Kendra in Patan, where an exhibition of traditional and contemporary art titled Kholo 25 is underway.  <figure><img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c8e9c7e80680e0b7878jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>But this one is a starkly different image. To begin with, it is not a photograph. Artist Kailash K Shrestha’s enormous acrylic on canvas shows a king sitting on the coronation throne, but sans face, sans hands.The famous crown of the Shah kings of Nepal hangs in the air, heavy, unsure. Who will grab it next?The painting is also aptly titled Occurrence before Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal – words that once were so full of promise, now reduced to being the punchline of a disillusioned joke, a mere vanishing act.The painting invites a more abstract reading. A viewer’s eyes shift from one point to another as there is no face and no immediately recognisable human trait.Faces and names have been pared off to reveal <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/nepal-from-royal-to-republic,3736" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an institution of glittering crowns and thrones</a> – a statement on <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepals-rudderless-political-leadership/">the nature of power</a> and the meaning of monarchy itself. <img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c929c7e80680e0b7879jpeg.jpg" alt="">Curated by Ujen Norbu Gurung, Kholo 25 brings 22 artists working in Nepal to address the shifting tides, perception and faith in Nepali society and politics.The exhibition is named after the Mani-kholo, prayer wheels in Buddhist shrines, to symbolise cycles of time, thought, experience and growth, and to expand the dictionary of creativity and expression.A collateral event with <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/redefining-art-at-kathmandu-triennale-2077/">the ongoing Kathmandu Triennale 2077</a>, the exhibition showcases 14 young and rising Nepali artists alongside eight established and senior ones, also highlighting the significance of helping launch younger artists in the current climate of Nepali art.  <figure><img width="2822" height="1882" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c969c7e80680e0b787ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Kishor Jyoti’s Clash of the class is a semi-mythical painting that looks like a panel from the Mahabharat, if not for the leopard-headed naked torso attached to another robotic body.It is a fitting companion to Kailash Shrestha’s work, showing the battle between the elite and the working-class, as the middle-class tries to referee, or even join in. An andromorphic jackal (wolf?) snarls from a golden chariot, brandishing a whip over its head. There is a dog in the middle, also barking at the leopard. It is a ferocious work, loud and violent. One can almost hear the growling tension and the thundering sky behind. Moreover, on the opposite wall is the true horror: a real clash of arms and ideologies, suffered by the Nepali people whose loss and grief continues to be unaccounted for. Photographs from the 2007 book <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=13243#.YiTX8ftBzOQ">A People War</a> curated by Kunda Dixit taken during the Maoist insurgency show people hugging the bodies of their dead husbands, children hurt, a woman washing blood off the front of her shop, several men carrying moving the dead remains. <figure><img width="640" height="427" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c999c7e80680e0b787bjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>“Most discourse on the war is only in terms of the numbers,” says curator Gurung, who compares the different political establishments in Nepal to shifting cages (a subject of Kishor Jyoti’s another painting in the exhibition).“But the meaning behind those numbers is being forgotten, erased. What was the price the people were really made to pay?”All this reminds us of the violent reality of the world outside — <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/ukraines-lessons-for-sandwiched-nations-like-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ukraine</a>, Yemen, Syria and the never-ending brutality in world history. <figure><img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c9e9c7e80680e0b787cjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The politics of being is central here here. From the meditations of memory – Teesha Shrestha’s mixed-media works depicting the deities and Newa heritage (in gold) being swallowed by the dark clouds of ash and thoughtless urbanisation – to masked shapes, faces, ideals and cages, the art is linked by the questions of body, of freedom, history, and individual and collective responsibilities. Above on the first floor, however, the atmosphere is the exact opposite. Following the traditional paubha paintings above of deities on various kholo around the room call for introspection and compassion.  <img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720ca29c7e80680e0b787djpeg.jpg" alt=""><figure><img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720ca79c7e80680e0b787ejpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The two floors are not so separate as may seem at first glance. Both the harsher reality downstairs and the calmer, philosophic upstairs encourage the viewer to ask: what is धर्म (Dharma)? “Despair is so commonplace now,” says Gurung, “that we don’t even think about it anymore. There is a disconnection with our Dharma, and we are not even compassionate to our own family members.”As one stands before Saru Prajapati’s Padmapani Lokeshvara or Rabi Shrestha’s Avalokitesvara, under the warm, lulling lighting, there indeed arrives a deep sense of love and awe. <figure><img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720caa9c7e80680e0b787fjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="6720" height="4480" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720caf9c7e80680e0b7880jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Reality is often overwhelming and disturbing, and we look for a recourse to help us heal and deal with it. Religion, gods, philosophy is one way: perhaps, art is another.Gurung recalls an artist friend of his jokingly asking him once: “When shall we pick rocks and take to the streets?”He believes that we are all contributing one way or another, whether subtly from our homes or on the road tackling expired tear-gas shells.“As artists,” he says, “our craft, their voice and expression are just as loud and forceful as sticks and stones.”Kholo 2532 Cycles of LifeDhokaima Café, Yala Maya Kendra, PatanContemporary section: Till 15 March 2022Traditional section: Till 29 March 2022Closed on Mondays

The wheel of time and thought

<figure><img width="2848" height="1518" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101120/637209089c7e80680e0b551djpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption></figcaption></figure>After being put off by the pandemic, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/art-on-the-city-kathmandu-triennale,3607" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepal’s largest art festival</a> is finally being held from 11 February - 31 March in venues across Kathmandu Valley.The Kathmandu Triennale 2077 will be held in three historically significant clusters of Patan, Kathmandu and Boudha with over 300 artworks by national and international artists, collectives and groups from over 40 other nations, including the Philippines, Haiti, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Myanmar and France. Initially slated for 2020, this will be the fourth edition of the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19783#.WNOrCdJ97IU" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kathmandu International Art Festival</a>, as it was known previously, and second in the Triennale format.  <figure><img width="2692" height="2089" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101120/6372090b9c7e80680e0b551ejpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The curatorial team is led by Artistic Director Cosmin Costinas and co-curators Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung, and the Triennale by its founder Sangeeta Thapa and director Sharareh Bajracharya. The artists will display a diverse range of media from photography, paintings to installations, and explore the issues and themes of displacement, migration, the People’s War, tantrik practices, identity and more.The curatorial concept of the Triennale is rooted in acknowledging the local and indigenous multiplicity of Nepal, moving away from an Eurocentric canon of art history and appreciation. The name of the event, Kathmandu Triennale 2077 is itself a significant shift in locality and perspective. Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/art-and-resistance-in-south-asia/">Art and resistance in South Asia</a>, Sushmita Preetha and Priyanka Singh<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/how-art-empowers-nepals-women/">How art empowers Nepal’s women</a>, Anita Bhetwal <figure><img width="1240" height="1754" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101120/637209109c7e80680e0b551fjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>“Originally we had planned to call it Kathmandu Triennale 2020, but then the pandemic hit,” explains Sheelasha Rajbhandari. “That called for a reorientation of sorts and rebranding. We risked confusing people outside the country, but it was a step towards reclaiming our place in the art world.” The Gregorian year 2020 is 2077 in the Bikram Sambat calendar officially used in Nepal. It is also a little playful, since 2077 is still half a century off in the future in the Gregorian calendar. “That was intentional,” Rajbhandari says. “It adds a futuristic element to the show, we wanted to consider time not just as a linear concept.” Hit Man Gurung adds that the Triennale is not just an exhibition, but includes research projects, conversation programs, with long and detailed behind-the-scenes preparation, which began in 2019. So, even though the Triennale is taking place in 2022, the number 2077 more closely symbolises the confluence of past, present and future that has shaped it.  “It was a strategic decision,” Gurung adds. “Referring also to the real beginning of the preparation has helped create a unique identity of the Kathmandu Triennale.” <figure><img width="1507" height="896" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101120/637209139c7e80680e0b5520jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Founder Sangeeta Thapa who also established <a href="https://www.facebook.com/artgallerysiddhartha" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Siddartha Art Gallery</a> describes the two years of pandemic that re-routed the Triennale as "a wrinkle in time”.“Time stood still, and the Triennale stood still. It was important also to acknowledge the stillness, the global suffering,” she says.So the title stayed. In addition to looking back, the curators also continued the practice of inclusive and diverse practices that have shaped the Triennale since its beginnings in 2009.“Artists will cover a diverse range of topics, such as reclaiming identity, decolonisation, voices of the LGBTQ community and activism,” she says. “It is also a reflection of the diversity around us.”<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Taking-art-out-in-the-open,3250" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepal and Nepali artists</a>, especially those who hail from Indigenous communities, are often left out of the global discourse of art, and sometimes even in the native South Asia. The Triennale aims to celebrate the diverse backgrounds, explore deep-rooted interconnectivity between communities, while rejecting the colonial-inspired exoticisation of the Himalaya as a mythical utopia. <figure><img width="1024" height="429" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101120/637209179c7e80680e0b5521jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The Triennale does not have a theme as such. Gurung thinks they can be distracting.  “They may give a semblance of specificity, but the artists, their works and the collective behind the Triennale are part of a process, and the discourse initiated or informed should continue beyond the event itself,” he adds. The Triennale will also feature bilingual curatorial cards, says Sharareh Bajracharya, who brings her experience in art education. “We are bringing communities together and making conscious efforts to reach out to schools and people from different disciplines,” she says.Workshops, discussions, talks and tours are integral components of the Triennale, and it will blend virtual and physical events. Online program will take place from 11-28 February before the physical venues open on 1 March 2022.“The online programs will be very discursive and will focus on contextualising the exhibitions, sharing narratives, presenting publications and thoughts by contributors who have worked on the Triennale,” says Bajracharya. <figure><img width="1857" height="2192" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101120/637209199c7e80680e0b5522jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The first three days of March will feature programs at the venues, which have been chosen for their historical and cultural significance. Exhibitions will take place at the Patan Museum, the Bahadur Shah Baithak, Nepal Art Council, Taragaon Museum and Siddhartha Art Gallery.“We will try to go live on social media so that more people can join,” she adds, “but we do want to maintain the physical exhibition. There will nonetheless also be a 3D documentation of the exhibitions.”Kathmandu Triennale 2077 promises to foster a healthy art ecology based on the exchange of knowledge through an expansive exhibition combined with a strong educational outreach program. It is a non-commercial, non-profit exhibition which is free of charge and open to all.The Triennale is presented by Siddhartha Arts Foundation and Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation, and supported by its partner institution <a href="https://www.para-site.art" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Para Site in Hong Kong</a>, where the precursory exhibition <a href="https://www.para-site.art/exhibitions/garden-of-six-seasons/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Garden of Six Seasons</a> was presented in 2020.The Kathmandu Triennale 2077 is also taking place at a time when Nepal is preparing to <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-art-debut-in-venice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">inaugurate its pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in April</a>. Co-incidentally, after the Triennale is over, a selection of works will travel to <a href="https://savvy-contemporary.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Savvy Contemporary in Berlin</a> in June. “We had planned to make a travel exhibition before the pandemic, partnering with institutions all over the world,” Gurung recalls. “It is very lucky and encouraging that Berlin is happening now.”<a href="https://www.kathmandutriennale.org/">Kathmandu Triennale 2077</a> 11 February-31 March<a href="https://www.kathmandutriennale.org/">https://www.kathmandutriennale.or</a>

Redefining art at Kathmandu Triennale 2077

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161156/636d1f569c7e80680e0af45djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2046" height="1377"/><figcaption>Lambe. All photos: BHARAT RAI.</figcaption></figure>Bharat Rai's ongoing exhibition ‘Whistle Blower’ at Ekantakuna's <a href="https://windhorseartgallery.com">Wind Horse Gallery</a> is a quasi-surreal take on the world of tourism and mountaineering. His first solo show of 35 paintings do not show Himalayan peaks but the often-overlooked state of tourism, modernism and consumerism.You will find few mountains here. The white background in the canvases is the closest thing to snow and clouds. The real protagonists are the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Equus-in-brick-kilns-kathmandu,4085">mules, donkeys and the burden on their backs</a>. We can almost hear their rusty bells punctuating the silence of their unsung endurance.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161156/636d1f599c7e80680e0af45ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1420" height="1437"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>One of the first paintings that comes into view as visitors climb the staircase to the vast gallery is called Lale: a brown mule leaping with its tail up in the air. Its dark, melancholic eyes gaze ahead as the blue sacks on its back weigh it down. A long rope attaches the mule to a sealed Coca Cola bottle with crystallised rocks inside.The artwork is striking, and whimsical — a leaping animal tied to the ground by an empty bottle of soda. The bells around the neck and shoulders in the colourful harness look harmless at first, and we instantly recognise that these are the beasts of burden that make trekking and mountaineering possible, allowing those selfies on Kala Patar and summit certificates.But what of Lale, frozen as it tries to jump and break free, despite being held fast to the ground? Another mule, Dhurbe, is leaping off the back of a blue pick-up truck. Yet another looks dolefully at a miniature version of itself lying on its back with legs flailing upwards.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161156/636d1f5d9c7e80680e0af45fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1786" height="1482"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It may not be immediately noticeable, but the atmosphere of the paintings is indeed that of a false levity, draped in a foreboding silence of suffering.Silence pervades Rai's art: silence not volunteered but forced, and silence caught in motion. Rai's muses are mules and donkeys — always in the act of moving, whether away, towards, or in circles. They are flying, rolling and dancing even. Their desired destination is up the trail, but they appear to be protesting through their contortions — and their silence.Rai grew up around these equine heroes, spending over a decade in their company. His family profession was moving cargo on mule trains up and down the Solu Khumbu trail before motor cars and jeeps took over. He has shared his feelings and worries more with mules than humans, and this very empathy influences his art.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161156/636d1f609c7e80680e0af460jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1863" height="1536"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>'Most visitors and strangers would tell me about the creatures', writes Rai in his statement, 'saying that they would cry if they did not get heavy loads!' But, as evidenced by his paintings, the mules do not look happy to be carrying all those sacks and cylinders.On the contrary, they are tired, beaten and eager to break free of their tethers. The animals have names, distinct characters and personalities. In a way these downtrodden animals are symbolic of the silent disenfranchised citizens of our country. Abused, exploited, excluded, collectively derided.The effect is twofold. While the animals are taken as symbols of simplicity and foolishness (and thus abused), by using them as metaphors Rai draws our attention also to the cruelty and micro-aggression directed towards the people living on the margins.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161156/636d1f649c7e80680e0af461jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1484" height="2048"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161156/636d1f689c7e80680e0af462jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1484" height="2048">Melody of Shovel (left) and Hero (right)Some paintings depict items scattered around mountaineering camps: steel plates, cylinders, rusty wheelbarrows, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-building-a-highway-to-everest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a yellow excavator</a> and a sewing machine practically falling apart. One canvas has a rolled-up roti held together by a safety pin. There is a larger statement here against the recklessness, entitlement and egotism of mountain visitors.Despite these undercurrents, ‘Whistle Blowers’ is not a pessimistic show. It is more a call to action to be more mindful, more conscious. Our four-legged mountain friends are not indentured servants, but beings with dreams and hopes of their own.We are conditioned to imagine nobility in horses and ridicule donkeys. Rai subverts these notions by inviting us to look into the eyes of mules as muses.‘Whistle Blowers’ by Bharat RaiWind Horse Gallery, Bhanimandal-Ekantakuna Road, Lalitpur10am-6pm (closed on Mondays)Limited visitors in the hall. Masks mandatory.Till 17 January 2022.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/on-screen-mountains/">On-screen mountains</a>, Sahina Shrestha<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-next-for-reinhold-messner/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What next for Reinhald Messner?</a>, Kunda Dixit

Muses of the mountains

One smoggy winter morning in February 2019, Ekta regretted coming to her sculpture class. It was the first day of her period, and the 19-year-old wished she was home, curled up in bed with a hot water bag to soothe her cramps.
Her class was at Kalapremi Ceramic Studio, a dark room on the ground floor of a house in Maharajganj, and Ekta’s teacher was the artist Gopal Das Shrestha ‘Kalapremi’, a noted sculptor.
Two other students were already there, using all their muscle strength to knead the sculpting clay. Ekta, now 24, recalls how Kalapremi asked her if she was feeling all right. She avoided him, as she did not want everyone to know she was menstruating.
Kalapremi repeatedly asked Ekta what was wrong. She finally muttered that she was having her period, after which he grabbed her hand and led her to a partitioned corner of the studio and sat her on a chair. Before she could stop him, he slid his hand under her dress, and started massaging her abdomen.
“I was horrified,” Ekta recalls. “I told him to stop, but he didn’t listen, asking me not to be shy, saying he knew how to relieve my pain. He stopped only after I protested furiously.”&nbsp;
The art tutor then said, “You’re like my daughter. I’m doing it out of love to make you feel better, but you’re so stubborn.”&nbsp;
“Instead of saying sorry he acted like I was the one having crazy thoughts,” remembers Ekta, adding that from April 2016 to August 2020 beginning the time she was 16, the artist sexually abused and harassed her on several occasions. &nbsp;
Now, Ekta and the artist’s other former students are finally sharing their experiences and some are pressing legal charges against him, hoping that others do not have to endure what they did.&nbsp;
Award-winning artist and teacher Gopal Das Shrestha ‘Kalapremi’ (the name means ‘Art Lover’) is known for his ceramic art, sculpture, and contemporary pottery. He was <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/the-house-of-kalapremi">profiled in Nepali Times after a collaborative exhibition</a>, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ at the Siddhartha Art Gallery three years ago.&nbsp;
His pieces, titled Gaalis, featured sculpted female figures with the heads of dogs, sheep, and donkeys (pictured) to depict derogatory terms for women. Some critics said the collection was a satire on feminists.
Kalapremi started his artistic and teaching career in 1983 and over the years taught at Bhanubhakta School, Kathmandu University School of Arts, Lalitkala Campus and at his private Kalapremi Ceramic Studio. He has also lectured at Jeonju University in South Korea and recently at Tabor Academy in the United States.
Seven of Kalapremi’s former students were interviewed for this story. Five female students said he touched them inappropriately in his studio or at Kathmandu University. Two male students said they witnessed him abuse and harass the women. In all cases, the students struggled to recognise the abuse when it occurred, and the lack of reporting systems left them to cope on their own for years.&nbsp;
Earlier this year, students shared a social media post hinting at Kalapremi’s history of abusive behaviour following which more students of the artist reached out sharing similar experiences. Some students spoke of abuse that happened as long as 20 years ago.
Kalapremi, 60, has denied the allegations. He told Nepali Times: “Some years ago, there was a movement encouraging people to hug and kiss. I used to do it purely out of friendship and love. But after seeing posts on social media last year calling out my behaviour, I realised my actions may have hurt some people. I understand now that I should have been more mindful.”
He added: “I am also an auxiliary health worker, so I know the exact points to massage to relieve menstrual pain. It’s not just menstruation, I take anyone who is ill to the hospital.”
Sexual abuse is much more rampant than reported given how difficult it is to prove it in court. The law defines sexual abuse as occuring when someone touches another’s private parts, coerces them into touching theirs, uses vulgar language, shows degrading images, or behaves indecently towards them without consent.&nbsp;
Ekta and her fellow students are consulting lawyer Suneeta Regmi Pokhrel, who says they know that even if the court decides in their favour, it is difficult to survive after speaking up, and influential men defend themselves saying they are being framed.&nbsp;
“They are in a lot of pain and weep when recalling how he abused them,” Regmi Pokhrel told us. “They are angry and have filed a case against him, but they are also terrified. They know he is a powerful man and they have seen how our society treats women who speak up against abusers. Unless people speak up, perpetrators will be emboldened.”
Art and academia in Nepal simply reflect the power imbalances in society where people with intersecting identities experience worse forms of abuse. Theatre actors Raj Kumar Pudasaini, Rajan Khatiwada, and Sunil Pokhrel were called out during the #MeToo movement in the Nepali theatre scene in 2019. Even after the allegations Pokhrel went on to receive national awards, while others continued to work without repercussions.
“If you speak up against abusers, you gradually get sidelined from projects,” explained a theatre artist who wished anonymity fearing professional setbacks. “The theatre scene in Nepal is quite small, you just have to make peace with the perpetrators and work with them if you want to sustain yourself.”&nbsp;
In academia there is a history of faculty members sexually harassing students and getting away with it. After Tribhuvan University (TU) lecturer Krishna Bhattachan was accused of harassing women students, the university said it would follow Nepal’s sexual harassment law and set up a reporting mechanism. But nothing happened to the professor, who had already retired. Instead, he counter-accused the students of 'attacking the indigenous people’s movement with baseless allegations' as <a href="https://kathmandupost.com/letters/2019/01/29/bhattachan-responds">he told the Kathmandu Post in 2019</a>. He continues to be featured as a prominent speaker including at TU.
Other faculty members previously accused of sexual harassment include Jagadish Murti Koirala from TU, Bishnu Prasad Acharya from Ratna Rajya Campus, and Bodha Raj Tripathee from Lalitpur Madhyamik Vidhyalaya. A woman staff member from TU also filed a sexual abuse complaint against Dambar Chemjong from TU.
Prominent figures like <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-nims-purja">mountaineer Nims Purja</a> have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/sports/mountaineering-sexual-harassment-abuse-nims-purja.html">accused of sexual assault</a>, and cricketer Sandeep Lamichhane, actor <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/celebrity-rape-case-spotlights-nepal-laws">Paul Shah</a>, and former speaker of Parliament <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mahara-arrested">Krishna Bahadur Mahara</a> have been accused of rape, but society-at-large has let off the alleged perpetrators amdist a larger debate about justice for survivors and punishment of perpetrators.&nbsp;
‘Gaushala-26’ is the court name given to the 18-year-old who accused Sandeep Lamichhane, former captain of Nepal’s national cricket team and skipper of Biratnagar Kings in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/here-comes-the-nepal-premier-league">ongoing Nepal Premier League</a>, of rape. She left the country citing society questioning her character affecting her mental health while Lamichhane got an outpouring of support. In May, the Patan High Court overturned a prior verdict that found Lamichhane guilty of rape and had sentenced him to eight years in prison. During the 23-month legal battle to pursue justice, Gaushala-26 faced threats of gang rape and acid attacks.&nbsp;
Exhausted by the struggle, Gaushala-26 sought to “move to a new world” where she could live free without hiding her identity.
Actress Samragyee Rajya Laxmi Shah in an Instagram video now deleted detailed the harassment she faced from a filmmaker during a movie shoot. She did not name any name but veteran actor Bhuwan KC filed a defamation case against Rana, but the court ruled that the charge lacked sufficient evidence.&nbsp;
Former Kathmandu mayor <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/theytoo">Keshav Sthapit also mocked the #MeToo movement</a>, calling accusations against him by journalists Rashmila Prajapati and Ujjwala Maharjan “a rape of men’s rights”.
Serial Abuse
Back at the Kalapremi Ceramics studio, another former student, 24-year-old Rajiv, says he felt the need to speak out after seeing his female classmates being abused.&nbsp;
“He frequently kissed them on their cheeks,” he told Nepali Times. “Whenever they walked into the studio he flailed his arms like a child asking for a hug. They awkwardly hugged him from the side, but he pulled them closer, held their chin, and kissed their cheeks.”&nbsp;
Rajiv says he also saw Kalapremi pull the women’s bra straps, touch their breasts, and slap their buttocks. The young students would freeze, not knowing how to react, and if they protested, he would say it was “normal in art”. Rajiv, 19 at the time like his classmates, remembers thinking perhaps the well-respected artist was right after all.
Another student, Luna, who took lessons at Kalapremi’s studio from 2020 to 2022 did try to confront the tutor after he made an obscene proposal to her. She recalls: “One day when the other students had left the studio and it was just the two of us, he told me that God had given him special artistic talent and he could transfer those powers to me. But to do that both of us will have to be naked, inside a dark room, and have sex.”
Luna, who was 18 then, was livid and told him she did not want any of his powers, but she says he laughed at her as if he was joking. She did not tell her family about the incident because she thought no one would believe her.&nbsp;
“They were all in awe of this famous artist and felt I should be grateful that to be learning sculpting from him,” she says. “I was scared to be alone with him in case he talked about sex again. My coping mechanism was to be rude so he wouldn’t try to come close to me.”
Seeing how some classmates were standing up to Kalapremi, Ekta too tried to push back against his advances, but she said he found ways to coerce her. Since Ekta, Rajiv, and Luna could not afford Kalapremi’s Rs30,000 monthly fee for lessons, he had offered them all a stipend to assist him in the studio.
“He had spondylosis and took me to his therapy sessions to learn massage techniques, then he often made me and other students massage him,” says Ekta. Whenever she refused, he would feign pain to make her feel sorry for him. “He would insist that I put my hands under his shirt so that I could massage him better,” she adds.
The art tutor often tried to “seduce sympathy” from Ekta by sharing how he had never been loved as a child and was “sexually frustrated” as an adult.&nbsp;
“At 7PM, he would pour himself Signature whiskey and immediately go off again about how he was sex-starved. I didn’t know how to respond. It took me time to realise alcohol was just an excuse to talk about sex,” Ekta says.
If convicted, Kalapremi could face financial penalty and/or a prison sentence of up to three years according to Section 224 of National Penal (Code) Act 2017.&nbsp;
Data suggests that victims of child sexual abuse on average take nearly 24 years to tell someone about their trauma, and some may never disclose it at all.&nbsp;
“In our culture, children are rarely taught about boundaries. They often react, show anger when adults pinch their cheeks. But adults insist they did it out of love, and force the children to accept it,” says Sita Lama, a psychotherapist at Manka Kura. “And even when someone touches them inappropriately they struggle to identify and verbalise it.”
When perpetrators claim to be “acting out of love”, Lama says survivors are likely to perceive it as something safe, rather than recognising it as abuse.&nbsp;
“It may take years for them to realise they were abused,” she explains. "And even when they become aware, the power imbalance with the abuser and the associated shame often prevents survivors from speaking up."
Other former students from the School of Art at Kathmandu University have also come forward years later, saying Kalapremi sexually abused them. As young adults, they felt his behaviour was off but were uncertain if it was inappropriate, illegal, or they did not know how to respond. After having understood that it was indeed abuse, they say they are speaking out now to protect others.&nbsp;
Amina Singh, a visiting faculty member at Kathmandu University, says there is no clause against sexual abuse in contracts of teachers, and there is no formal grievance handling mechanism for the students.&nbsp;
“So the only way students can to deal with sexual abuse is approach someone they trust,” she says.
Eight other former art students of Lalit Kala Campus and Srijana College of Fine Arts of Tribhuvan University and other private art studios in Kathmandu say they were also sexually abused by their art teachers. Three faculty members interviewed from these institutions said they saw the abuse, but felt it was futile to report it given how powerful the teachers were.
In the absence of a formal system, some longtime women artists warned each other about “problematic” artists. They shared &nbsp;a “heads-up” to be more cautious when collaborating with them, and avoided responding to their calls and texts after work hours.
To ensure art institutions are safe for all, galleries, museums, artist studios, and smaller art spaces need to develop policies on sexual harassment. This would include a code of conduct or studio policies that hold the leadership accountable and outline the principles of professional ethics.&nbsp;
Students and employees should inquire about accountability mechanisms for raising concerns, both formally and informally, advocates say.
Three years after Ekta left the ceramics studio, she learnt that Kalapremi had harassed many other women. Still trying to get a footing in the art industry, she attended a workshop in Kathmandu where women artists discussed ways to stay safe in the art sector.&nbsp;
Since it was a close-knit group Ekta opened up about how she felt violated and realised she was not alone, he had been abusing underprivileged students for years, and this was common knowledge among artists in Nepal.
Ekta says that even after she quit, Kalapremi continued sending her text messages like ‘I am thinking of you’, ‘Why have you stopped speaking with me’, or ‘I am waiting for your call’.&nbsp;
But what really forced her to act was when Ekta found out that he was sending similar texts to her younger sister.&nbsp;
“I’ve had enough,” she told us. “He abused me all these years but I won’t let him abuse my sister.” &nbsp;
Ekta, Rajiv and Luna are not the real names of the students.&nbsp;

‘Art Lover’ accused of sexual abuse

It was 8:15 in the evening of 25 March 1968 when everyone in the village of Batulechaur near Pokhara heard a deafening sound like thunder as a bright flashing object hurtled down to land in a field.&nbsp; That field belonged to Kul Timilsina, and the next morning he retrieved a sheet of metal about 2m by 1m and carried it home with the help of a few others, thinking it would be useful for his buffalo shed.&nbsp; Before he died at age 83 three years ago, Timilsina had told photo archivist Sunil Ulak that the black metal sheet was not rectangular and had rounded corners. There are a few witnesses still alive who have a clear recollection of the object that fell from the sky that night.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024120707128_75cc85aac56b9cc4a77366471f058d7b3eb6868776811b0923845c2d0a61f014.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024120707128_75cc85aac56b9cc4a77366471f058d7b3eb6868776811b0923845c2d0a61f014" data-rendition-name="original" width="1170" height="601" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> <figcaption>The field in Batulechaur belonging to Kul Timilsina where fragments of a flying object fell from the sky in 1968.</figcaption> </figure>  One of them is Timilsina’s wife Gyanu, who was 22 at the time. She had been at home, and remembers hearing the big bang and the sky becoming very bright. “We saw the thing in the field in the morning,” she told us. “It looked like a lid, a covering of some sort. The way it was stuck in the ground, it must have fallen from the sky. We thought we could use it to dry clothes on, and took it home.”&nbsp; Another witness is Kul Narayan Paudel. “I was only eight then. We ran to the field to see what had fallen. It was a four-sided metal sheet. The elders took it away, and I don't know what happened to it.” &nbsp; Ram Bahadur Baniya, a teacher at the local school, says he had heard the sheet had been brought to the school, and later handed over to the Zonal Commissioner at the time, Nanda Prasad Malla. “But that is all hearsay,” he says.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024120707128_0bf207a12063fb8155b3c8d9a00a94887b126380c9e0627527c84cf5e1101f54.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2024120707128_0bf207a12063fb8155b3c8d9a00a94887b126380c9e0627527c84cf5e1101f54" data-rendition-name="original" width="1170" height="610" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> <figcaption>Gyanu Timilsina, wife of Kul Timilsina.</figcaption> </figure>  There are two versions of what happened to Kul Timilsina’s metal sheet. One is that an American Peace Corp Volunteer teaching at the nearby Bindyabasini School took it, and another is that it was handed over to the government. Recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US State Department documents from the time say that the US Embassy in Kathmandu tracked down the object two years later and had it shipped back to the US. A telegram from the Department of State and Department of Defense tagged as ‘MOON DUST / Space Fragments’ dated 1 March 1972 stated: ‘1. Restored space fragment will be on board Embassy support flight 115 arriving Kathmandu on or about March 10. Fragment is packed in shipping crate (cargo no. 72-33365) marked in care of DAO.&nbsp; 2. State and Defense representatives examined fragments prior to shipment finding restoration acceptable.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071212_929d903ee06d41baa4f6040e981cd7c7d7bd75cc9c37c9b617d307fc8538d2df.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20241207071212_929d903ee06d41baa4f6040e981cd7c7d7bd75cc9c37c9b617d307fc8538d2df" data-rendition-name="original" width="856" height="568" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> <figcaption>Declassified CIA documents about the investigation into the object sighted in Pokhara. </figcaption> </figure>  The documents show that the US government, military and intelligence agencies investigated this incident thoroughly when it occurred, and have continued to revisit it ever since, as recently as five years ago. What is even more intriguing is that the object that fell in Pokhara was not the only unidentified space object that fell to earth that year. There were similar sightings of objects falling from the sky in Ladakh, Sikkim and Bhutan between 19 February and 25 March 1968.&nbsp; These mysteries were the subject of a CIA investigation in 1968 titled ‘<a href="https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100070007-8.pdf">Sighting of Unidentified Flying Objects in Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan</a>’, and the report is part of the recent online declassification of 800,000 top-secret documents from the period.&nbsp; &nbsp;Although unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have a connotation now of being alien craft, it could be pieces of satellite, missile, rocket or even aircraft. The CIA report documents six sightings in 1968 and quotes local sources as describing all of them having similar characteristics: bright blue or red streaks in the sky accompanied by loud sounds like lightning and thunder and objects falling to the ground. Aside from the metallic object that was found in Batlechaur, there were other items also found nearby in Tallakot, Tureypasal, Armalakot and Maidan. Whatever the object was, it seems to have disintegrated even before it hit the ground.&nbsp; The CIA report records the first sighting on 19 February 1968 in various parts of Sikkim and Olangchung Gola and Ghunsa in eastern Nepal. The light was said to be ‘long and thin’ and giving out ‘green and red light’. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071212_c3c825027d966a2aedc846970390eebe063957503c7eacc8e01e0517843f9bbb.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20241207071212_c3c825027d966a2aedc846970390eebe063957503c7eacc8e01e0517843f9bbb" data-rendition-name="original" width="892" height="596" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara "> </figure>  Two days later on 21 February, a soundless blue object was seen traveling fast across the sky above Thimphu in Bhutan. Then on 4 March there were multiple daytime sightings or white streaks in the sky at Chang La Pass, Fukche and Koyul in Ladakh. There were more sightings in Ladakh on the very day fragments fell near Pokhara on 25 March 1968.&nbsp; After the sightings in Pokhara, rumours started flying in Kathmandu that these were aliens trying to land on Earth, it could be Russian or Chinese spy planes or satellites, and some even say it as a sign from heaven that the end of the world was near. This was at the height of the Cold War. The Russians and Americans were testing their thermonuclear devices as well as intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems. The Washington-Beijing rapprochement had not yet happened, and China was making quick progress testing atomic bombs. Within two years after its first atomic test, in 1966 China exploded its first hydrogen bomb at the Lop Nur site in Xinjiang, 3,000km to the north from Nepal. After neary six decades, what is still intriguing is that all the sightings within a few months of each other in 1968 were along the Himalayan arc bordering Tibet: from Bhutan, Sikkim Nepal, to Ladakh. The US military intelligence seems to have concluded that this was not a coincidence and there were frequent research trips to the site in Pokhara by American officials in the months after the incident. With the help of the Royal Nepal Army, the region north of Pokhara was thoroughly searched.&nbsp; A confidential memo dated 25 June 1968 by Jerry C Trippy to a ‘Mr Farley’ mentions that the US Air Force’s Foreign Technology Division had decided that the debris could be important because it may be related to a Chinese missile test or a Soviet ‘Vehicle Venik’ rocket.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071216_feb5425692dc36b20187de4e4fcc2ce9fd12b6d9e1b8724398e50bcdbf9032fe.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20241207071216_feb5425692dc36b20187de4e4fcc2ce9fd12b6d9e1b8724398e50bcdbf9032fe" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> </figure>  On 28 August 1968 the US Embassy in Kathmandu sent a letter to Washington DC saying that the object could be of Soviet origin, possibly from when the rocket carrying the ‘Kosmos 208’ satellite re-entered the atmosphere. But why were the fragments falling to earth several weeks apart, and in the same region? No one knows where the metal sheet that Kul Timilsina recovered is now. It was definitely packed in a crate and taken to the US, and although it is rumoured that it was returned that is not very likely. Archivist Sunil Ulak heard from the Timilsina family that CIA officials had returned to the site five years ago. &nbsp; Interest in UFOs peaked in the US in the 1950s, with the Cold War space race and tests of atomic weapons and delivery rockets. CIA and scientists were being sent to investigate sightings, both publicly and privately. Could the Pokhara fragments as well as the sightings in Ladakh and Bhutan actually be alien craft falling to earth? The renewal in interest in space travel in large part due to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, UFOs and sightings are again subjects of public interest.&nbsp; Even 57 years later, even if there was definitive proof about whether the Batlechaur fragment was from a Chinese missile or a soviet rocket, it has not been made public in documents declassified so far. We may never know.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071216_b6938795f40731e7657fd6dcbb3cf460a326186a15eb11d4f832f602201ff598.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20241207071216_b6938795f40731e7657fd6dcbb3cf460a326186a15eb11d4f832f602201ff598" data-rendition-name="original" width="642" height="320" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> </figure>  Sunil Ulak speculates if the debris actually came from an American aircraft, perhaps on an intel mission upon China. “Which could explain why they were so thorough in collecting the fragments in Pokhara,” he says. But that still does not explain the multiple sightings weeks apart in 1968.&nbsp; Indeed, US military aircraft were at that time flying frequent night-time missions from air force bases in India to supply weapons to Khampa guerrilla camps in Nepal located north of Pokhara in Mustang. It could very well be that the Chinese shot down one such aircraft. The other sightings could have been contrails of US spy planes, or Chinese anti-aircraft missiles.&nbsp; There were quite a few developments regarding UFOs in 2024. In a US congressional hearing in July, former intelligence officer David Grusch claimed that the government had long been involved in a program to investigate and retrieve non-human craft crashes, and then try to reverse engineer them. However Grusch did not show any evidence.&nbsp; The UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 was signed into law by Joe Biden in December 2023. It plans to oversee the public disclosure of UFO information. However, there is a clause in it that prevents disclosure if it would cause threats to military defense, intelligence operations or foreign relations.&nbsp; It is unlikely that the declassified documents about sightings in the Himalayan will cause any real surprise about definite evidence of alien life even if it was found. It seems humanity will continue, at least for now, to wonder about curious lights in the sky and whether there is anybody out there.&nbsp;

UFO over Pokhara

Four international names in architecture, Shigeru Ban, Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando and Louis Isadore Kahn, all left their mark in Nepal. But despite their best intentions, the ambitious designs fizzled out. Ban, Koolhaas and Ando won Pritzkers, the best known international award for architecture, and Kahn could have won it had the prize been given in his lifetime. But their designs fell short of transforming Nepali architecture and did not help inspire local architects.&nbsp; Why were these four ‘starchitects’ unable to pull off their Nepal projects and enrich the country with exemplary contemporary designs? The failure, especially the violation of Kahn’s design, also raises larger questions about how much contemporary architecture is valued in Nepal.&nbsp; Whereas Sri Lanka had Geoffrey Bawa and Bangladesh had Mazharul Islam, the pioneers of contemporary architecture in Nepal have had far less public appreciation. One wonders if Nepali architecture only refers to the monuments and heritage of the past. Nepal does have examples of outstanding modern architecture such as the &nbsp;पाङ्रे घर ‘Wheel House’ and खुट्टे घर &nbsp;‘House on Legs’ by Shankar Nath Rimal in the 1960s. These are the best examples of how some Nepali designers successfully tailored modern architecture to the Nepali context.&nbsp; Ten years ago, Nepal had three architecture magazines, SPACES, praXis and Business Architecture, but none of these survived. This newspaper has prominently covered contemporary architecture, and the built environment, but these are exceptions in Nepal’s media. There have been a few encouraging signs. The 2024 exhibition Modern Encounters in Architecture in Kathmandu Valley (1945-1985) at the Taragaon Museum had many visitors and its accompanying book is a seminal document.&nbsp; In 2023, the Mountain Architecture Dialogue (MAD) that focused on examples of good-practice sustainable contemporary architecture for the mountainous terrains of Nepal was a packed event with over 300 young architects, engineers, environmentalists and architecture students. <h2>Shigeru Ban</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024122003128_8bb8dde080c5698c2585966bef27ce4c08e4ee488d3432b2caac98b9de762dfe.png" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024122003128_8bb8dde080c5698c2585966bef27ce4c08e4ee488d3432b2caac98b9de762dfe" data-rendition-name="original" width="990" height="1074" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal NT"> </figure>  Shigeru Ban had already built a name for himself in post-disaster construction when he came to Nepal following the 2015 earthquakes in which 500,000 people lost their homes. The basic design and its 3D-rendered images were reviewed in upbeat articles on DOMUS, Architectural Review, Dezeen, and Arch Daily.&nbsp; But his signature cardboard tubes could not handle the monsoon and the roof structure had to be re-designed with timber. Only two shelters were completed in Sindupalchok, and only one of them still stands at the Hyatt Regency grounds today, as Ban’s souvenir to Nepal.&nbsp; <h2>Rem Koolhaas</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024122003128_58afec9b57accfa38327af0936648c6eb2f2e11ff18f1af8ca27383dc57dc222.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2024122003128_58afec9b57accfa38327af0936648c6eb2f2e11ff18f1af8ca27383dc57dc222" data-rendition-name="original" width="750" height="722" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal NT"> </figure>  The designs of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas have a specific signature: bold shapes and an intriguing architectural typology that challenges standard building blocks. Some designs even seem to defy gravity, like the CCTV headquarters in Beijing: an angular, continuous geometry of glass and steel.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241220031216_a18dc8a8d6b97bc6fa9d590036cf374f9dc3709c699fe5c5787304bbd05cb17d.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20241220031216_a18dc8a8d6b97bc6fa9d590036cf374f9dc3709c699fe5c5787304bbd05cb17d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1812" height="1168" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal"> <figcaption>Rem Koolhaas' design for Ullen's School in Khumaltar.</figcaption> </figure>  Koolhaas was commissioned by Belgian billionaire Guy Ullens to design a new building for Ullens School in Khumaltar. The most prominent feature is its vertical glass block staircase. Some interior spaces have lowered windowsills, which provide ample views and daylight. But the school building has gone unremarked in Nepal. <h2>Tadao Ando</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241220031212_cc16bd6feb8be07a7198285b847a45d2126dc3a479e0cc7370331861fc544675.png" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20241220031212_cc16bd6feb8be07a7198285b847a45d2126dc3a479e0cc7370331861fc544675" data-rendition-name="original" width="626" height="628" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal"> </figure>  Doctors providing aid to victims of the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 in Japan requested Tadao Ando, who had donated his Pritzker money to the victims, to also make a design for a hospital in Butwal.&nbsp; Ando’s contribution would be pro-bono and the construction was funded by the Hanshin Earthquake victims and by the popular Japanese newspaper Mainichi, as a tribute to Nepali doctors. The first block that Ando designed for the Siddhartha Children and Women’s Hospital (SCWH) was the out-patient department. He quickly realised that he would not be able to pull off structures with his typical style of smooth-finished, high-quality concrete.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241220031216_73ec0950d52320277ccc81d4a66fa6aa6acb38141e7b7633683e4cf8179dc579.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20241220031216_73ec0950d52320277ccc81d4a66fa6aa6acb38141e7b7633683e4cf8179dc579" data-rendition-name="original" width="1594" height="958" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal"> <figcaption>Tadao Ando's Siddhartha Children and Women Hospital in Butwal.</figcaption> </figure>  Ando wrote in the online architectural catalog Architectuul, that the two main problems with the project were costs and the availability of local technology. ‘It became a facility that has a slightly different expression from the buildings I have completed so far,’ he wrote. He designed a colonnade for the west façade that would provide shelter from harsh sunlight, and the exposed brick walls were locally manufactured bricks.&nbsp; The hospital is characterised by modernist cuboidal massing, but the outer brick façades now appear unintentionally badly weathered by monsoons. The interiors lack both sufficient natural light and natural ventilation. <h2>Louis I Kahn</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024122003128_612e199d62fb3e72b6b8f6a936b0fa0451d8c0aa3d831c071320bf423ee3d67f.png" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="2024122003128_612e199d62fb3e72b6b8f6a936b0fa0451d8c0aa3d831c071320bf423ee3d67f" data-rendition-name="original" width="694" height="926" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal NT"> </figure>  American architect Louis I Kahn had experience of projects in South Asia, and several were under construction when he died suddenly in 1974. Amongst these were the National Assembly complex in Dhaka, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and the Family Planning and Maternal Child Welfare Centre in Kathmandu.&nbsp; Kahn had started the USAID funded project in Nepal by developing a master plan for the government institutional zone in Kathmandu, which included a building for the Health Ministry. The building’s façade in exposed brick has deeply recessed vertical windows for shading.&nbsp; The balancing of accentuated horizontal lines in the brickwork with the verticality of the larger composition is the work of a master. The brick walls rise up into punctured parapet walls at the roof level. These square apertures ‘frame the sky’.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241220031216_69c2e4972dbe38773e0a3a3f1129485c9c87033ee84cd454e24ae0dc772d05cf.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20241220031216_69c2e4972dbe38773e0a3a3f1129485c9c87033ee84cd454e24ae0dc772d05cf" data-rendition-name="original" width="1924" height="1242" loading="lazy" alt="Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal"> <figcaption>Louis Kahn's plan for the Ministry of Health.</figcaption> </figure>  When Kahn died, only the eastern half of the building was finished. The Western part was never built and Nepal’s bureaucrats decided that without paint, the exposed brick façade was not finished. Then in 1995, citing roof leakage and a space crunch, the Health Ministry added a floor.&nbsp; The frames-to-the-sky in the roof parapet were converted into windows and topped off with a sloping roof of corrugated steel sheets, whose only virtue was that it was cost-effective.&nbsp; Kahn’s orthogonal composition, which clean horizontal and vertical lines, was desecrated despite a public outcry and legal challenges from architects and cultural organisations. A version of this article was first published in HIMAL Southasian. Illustrations by Varun S Bapu.

Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal

If you were raised in Nepal, you must have picked up its unique set of vocabulary: आन्दोलन, चक्का जाम, बन्द, राँके जुलुस, आफ्नो मान्छे, हाम्रो दल, कर्फु and many more words connoting political protest.
We became familiar with the acrid smell of burning tyres, and eyes smarting from tear gas. And yet, everyone speaks of another revolution in the making. Not by desire, but by suffocation.
We heard speeches about नयाँ नेपाल, but the New Nepal never arrived. The governance system changed, but it did not reflect on people’s lives — except for those close to centres of power. The state is still unreachable and is not bothered about <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/matter-of-life-and-debt">victims of loan sharks</a>, cooperative scams and other injustices.
Politicians continue to speak in sound bites, but fail to deliver. They have mastered the game of pointing fingers towards an external enemy and convincing people that they are never at fault. The political narrative is so disconnected from the actual analysis of the problem that suffocation doesn’t go away after every revolution.
No genuine effort has been made to deliver at all, which is why there is a palpable sense of disillusionment in the air forcing us to seek another revolution, even if Nepal may not be able to afford it.
How has the current system successfully held power, even if the public is deeply frustrated? How is it that for three decades we continue to be led by the same faces, who have time and again, proved to us that they may be great politicians but not national leaders?
<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/improving-internet-governance-in-nepal">My experience at the epicentre of politics</a> has led me to identify three cultures that have enabled political parties to keep a tight hold on power: acceptance, silence and dependency.
We accept things the way they are. We use fatalistic phrases like “नेपालमा यस्तै हो” or “नेपालको कानुन दैब जानुन”. While this resilience enables us to rise back up from devastating calamities, it is also a reason for our compliance with the status quo.
Despite so many ‘revolutions’ that have led to significant reforms, these phrases keep getting reinforced, to the point that the upcoming generations have made it their lingo.&nbsp;
This acceptance is not a symbol of law-abiding citizens, but citizens living in fear of those in power, unable to ask the whys and why-nots.
Innovation suffocates in this culture of acceptance of the status quo. This is manifested in remarks like “but we don’t have any laws for this,” or “we don’t have the capacity to implement this”. An innovator or entrepreneur therefore has to spend that energy to become a political lobbyist, often educating and convincing the bureaucracy.&nbsp;
Remember when locally assembled <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/designed-and-made-in-nepal">Yatri motorbikes</a>, despite having willing customers, had to suffer to secure license numbers because of a lack of regulations? Instead of creating new laws, the government kept chanting the “We will promote Nepal-made goods” mantra, leaving entrepreneurs in a labyrinth of bureaucracy. The weight of acceptance of the law lies heavily on innovators. Fatalism is a tactic used by those in power to generate mass fear in society.
When we accept, we become silent. This is a pervasive phenomenon. We are trained to keep quiet, lest we ruffle feathers, burn bridges, or not get the help we need in future. We know, yet we don’t speak.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bureaucratic-hurdles-in-researching-nepals-bureaucracy">Bureaucratic hurdles in researching Nepal's bureaucracy</a>, Daniel W Edwards
Here is one example: the 2021 census shows that the number of baby boys born for every 100 baby girls is 112. This is a clear indication of female foeticide because of boy preference in society.
Despite such horrifying realities, there is finger-pointing within the government between the Ministry of Health and Population with the Ministry of Home Affairs. At the citizen level, we know those who are involved in killing girls. Yet, we don’t speak up. The Nepal Medical Council reports state that despite this gender imbalance at birth, there is no indication of any action.
But why would anyone speak against one's own fraternity, no matter how vile the act is?
When we accept and keep quiet, we become dependent on those who yield power. From getting our government procedure completed on time to getting transfers, to accessing any of our legally protected rights as well, we are forced to depend on our networks of चिनेको मान्छे people we know by blood, village, relations, political affiliation.
The culture of dependency has been the established way in Nepal. If you drive a two-wheeler or four-wheeler, and you get into a small accident, you will be asked to sort it yourself, dialing up the most powerful person you know. It becomes a competition of who knows who.
Recently I was told that there were calls from the Ministry of Health and Population and another from the Prime Minister's Office for just one medical position in a private hospital. Each was pushing its own candidate. Guess which candidate got the position.&nbsp;
The dependency of people is not on the laws or the state, it is with people in power, a reliance on the network of somebody who knows somebody, including those not officially in power.
These cultures are deeply ingrained in our heads, and in society. Collectively they form a vicious circle that helps those in power to retain power. This is not the society we want to live in.
Then, what do we do as a collective to break away from this? How do we break away from the cultures of acceptance and silence that have created this dependency? What can we do to ensure that our children do not have to learn the jargon of आन्दोलन before they learn about the state?
These are the cultures political parties need to shed rather than use them to perpetuate their power. This is what <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/an-alternative-to-alternative-politics-in-nepal">alternative politics</a> needs to be about.
Sumana Shrestha is a member of Parliament’s Education, Health and Information Technology parliamentary committee and represents the Rastriya Swatantara Party.

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