From Kathmandu: art in a time of crisis

By Kurchi Dasgupta

It is afternoon in Kathmandu and I sit at my laptop, grateful that my internet connection is holding up despite the five or so jolts that have registered on the Richter scale since this morning. The recent earthquakes in Nepal have brought upon the country a level of destruction that defies comprehension – in just three weeks almost ten thousand people have died (more than half the number claimed by the decade-long civil war). Many more face a bleak future.

What possible relevance can art have in such circumstances? As soon as the first tremors hit, the National Academy of Fine Art (NAFA) came tumbling down and its annual exhibition had to be hastily removed from the building, along with the national archive of priceless traditional and Western-influenced modernist artworks. Right now a traumatised Chancellor, artist Ragini Upadhyay Grela, is running NAFA from a temporary structure in one corner of the building’s grounds. Given the central role the NAFA has in the Nepalese art world, its difficulties, even if temporary, constitute a major setback for both the traditional and contemporary artists whose careers are bound up with this institution.

The NAFA main campus after the earthquake

Even more severely damaged have been the buildings of Lalitkala Campus, the first Nepali centre for arts education, which since its founding in 1934, has produced the bulk of the country’s artists. The situation is so bad that relocation appears to be the institution’s only option. Its MFA programme, in the town of Kirtipur, may only resume after major architectural repairs are carried out and, according to the department head, Seema Sharma Shah, ‘exams are indefinitely postponed’. Kathmandu University (KU) has not fared much better. Its buildings are torn by cracks and fissures. However, hope remains that the university can reopen within the month at a new location. Srijana College of Fine Arts, the country’s first privately run art college, has also been badly damaged and its students are in a state of limbo, uncertain as to their future.

At this time of crisis the arts community has rallied round impressively. Many arts institutions and individual artists are involved in building shelters for the homeless before the monsoon season hits, or are otherwise active in delivering relief materials to remote communities. Sujan Chitrakar, the Director of Painting and Design at KU, and acclaimed ceramicist Gopal Kalapremi Shrestha, have both led students on missions to rebuild parts of the decimated Bungamati village, on the edge of Kathmandu valley. In addition to searching for and rescuing villagers from the rubble, the students are building shelters and toilets for those whose homes have been destroyed in the quake. Artist Milan Rai is doing an amazing job of improving sanitation in badly affected areas, and fellow practitioners Hitman Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari, through their community arts organization Artree, have made similar efforts in the devastated ancient township of Bhaktapur.

The crumbling buildings of the Hanuman Dhoka Palace Museum

The effects if the earthquake are not only material. Many citizens of Katmandu are already feeling the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. Three artists from the city have lost their lives, whilst at least fifteen more have been injured. Rabita Kisi, a young artist with whom I have worked in the past, has lost her home, her mother and her son. The artist Sushma Shakya, nominated for the Sovereign Prize last year, lost her left arm trying to save her father. Such stories pour in every day – hundreds of artists and students have been made homeless by the crisis and the death toll continues to rise due to the effects of shock or exposure to the severe rains. It is as yet unclear what effect the crisis has had on those artists living in more far flung areas of the country.

Museums have also been badly hit. Although most of the millennia-old artefacts in the National Museum at Chhauni have been rescued and stored in a safe location, sections of the building remain structurally unsound and cannot be entered, putting part of the collection at risk. The Patan Museum of sacred Nepalse art, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, also shows signs of minor damage. The Taragaon Museum, which charts the history of the city of Katmandu, has major cracks running across its walls. The Hanuman Dhoka Palace Museum, home to an unparalleled collection of objects relating to the recently toppled royal Shah dynasty, is so severely damaged that hopes of its restoration seem like nothing more than wild fantasy.

Anil Subba and Ritesh Maharjan, 7.8 Series, 2015, performance documentation

‘The art scene will have to start again from scratch,’ says Sangeeta Thapa, who heads the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Centre as well as the Kathmandu International Festival (KIAF). Her own space, Siddhartha Art Gallery, has had to be shut down due to structural damage, and the prospect of organizing another KIAF is currently unthinkable. Other commercial and non-commercial art spaces have also been affected. Bikalpa Art Centre and Artudio – art spaces for the young – have suffered heavily because of the quakes, whilst Bindu Art Space, Artist Proof Gallery and The Park Gallery have all sustained damage that has either forced them to close or rendered them barely operational. Lasanaa, a project space run by the renowned artist Ashmina Ranjit, was undergoing organizational restructuring and relocation when the tremors hit and now needs immediate funding to ensure its survival. Only The Nepal Art Council and the small commercial gallery Newa Chen hope to continue with their exhibition programmes.

City Museum, a popular new space, has been adversely hit on more than one front. Controversy has surrounded ‘Urban Myths 3’, a group show exploring contemporary Nepali urban life, which opened in early April. A mixed media work, depicting the Living Goddess Kumari of Kathmandu with a printed ad for condoms collaged onto her divine forehead, has attracted complaints from the Newar and Hindu communities. They revere Kumari, a pre-pubescent girl selected by the local population to be the living incarnation of the goddess Durga or Taleju, as a protective deity for the city. The work, by artist Sudeep Bhalla, was intended to encourage viewers to reflect upon the objectification of women in Nepali society. But many locals now believe that the earthquakes were caused by the Kumari’s wrath at the desecration of her image. As a result Kashish Das Shrestha, the space’s founder-director, has been threatened by community leaders, issued with an First Incident Report from the police and is currently evading arrest. My own solo exhibition, which would have opened there last month, has been postponed indefinitely.

Police inspecting Sudeep Bhalla’s artwork at City Museum

But even as fanaticism rears its ugly head some old social boundaries are crumbling. A fundraiser at Gallery MCube in Patan brought together two disperate strands of the local artworld, pairing the work of senior Nepali artists (such as Shashi Bikram Shah, Birendra Pratap Singh and Shashikala Tiwari) with that of younger performers Anil Subba and Ritesh Maharjan. At the opening, in a small, darkened room in the gallery Subba hung from a hook on the wall. His performance with Maharjan began as a digital timer sprung to life, counting down from 7.8mins, as sounds of destruction and extracts from local news broadcasters FM News _and _Zeitgeist droned from the speakers. All the while Subba flailed about helplessly, groaning into a microphone. On the floor lay the naked, supine, vulnerable body of Maharjan. The event, the duration of which stood in for the Richter Scale measurement of the first, terrible quake, conjured up the sense of threat experienced in the intial moments of the disaster. At a time when many are still in denial over the physical and psychological scars incurred by recent events, this jarring work of art constituted an important first step in the process of acknowledgement and acceptance.

Maharjan and Subba’s performance is just one example of the important psychotherapeutic function that art can provide in this context. Many artists are running much-needed art therapy and counselling sessions for children and adults, not only in Kathmandu, but in more remote towns and villages. Sadly, there is little financial support for these activities. What money there is comes from independent fundraising events for general relief, such as Gaynor O’Flynn’s international programme Artists for Nepal, but none specifically is meant for the arts community, except crowd-funding drives such as my own on Indiegogo. Further support has come in the form of contributions from online galleries such as eartsnepal.com. A fund from the NAFA is currently being planned.

Such financial difficulties are not a new problem for artists in Kathmandu. Even before the quake struck, the Nepali contemporary art scene was operating on tight margins. Whilst antiquities and artworks made according to traditional methods enjoy remarkable local and global popularity, contemporary artists from the country rarely experience comparable commercial success. There is no state funded museum for the display of contemporary art in Nepal, and only a handful of commercial galleries and exhibition spaces show such work. The postponement of KIAF, the country’s one international platform for artists, could plunge the arts community into obscurity for years to come unless something is developed to take its place. Artists depend upon sales, or on salaries from teaching positions, in order to survive. With the market stagnant, and the galleries and art schools closed, many artists will find it impossible to go on. What they need now, more than anything, are informed curators and institutions who can provide them with a space to work and exhibit outside of the country. The end of the civil war was the trigger for a new wave of artistic experimentation in the country which risks being lost if the Nepali artists are cut off from the wider world.

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