Miscellaneous
The Dharma of murals
If you’ve travelled towards Patan via Kupondole, you’ve probably noticed Hotel Himalaya’s colourful boundary wall. Adorned with wall paintings and positive messages about community, the wall, once peppered with political sloganeering, now serves as a massive, artistic bulletin board.Saral Karki
If you’ve travelled towards Patan via Kupondole, you’ve probably noticed Hotel Himalaya’s colourful boundary wall. Adorned with wall paintings and positive messages about community, the wall, once peppered with political sloganeering, now serves as a massive, artistic bulletin board. Much like Kupondole, hundreds of walls in Kathmandu Valley are also adorned with spurts of creativity ranging from calligraphy and patterns to abstract reinterpretations. These artworks, popularly known as street art or murals, can be enjoyed and appreciated not only by art aficionados, but virtually anybody who stumbles upon them. These murals spring out in the open; their canvases are the city walls—whitewashed and then painted over. And every art piece is preceded by a story. Now, for those interested in reveling in beyond just what is seen in these murals, Sattya—a Kathmandu-based arts collective—has recently begun hosting mural tours.
My curiosity about Kathmandu’s murals and their back stories led me to take an abridged version of the said tour. This included visiting murals in and around the Patan area. Starting off with an introductory session and traffic safety guidelines at Sattya’s premises near the Jawalakhel Zoo, the curated tour then weaves its way through Patan’s maze-like streets, where every new bend reveals something fascinating.
In 2013, when street art was still in its infancy, the walls across Kathmandu Valley were largely co-opted by political slogans, illicit messages, and tacky posters. At the time, Kolor Kathmandu, an arts project, developed an ambitious plan to paint 75 murals around the city with the aim of showcasing Nepal’s 75 districts. International artists and local artists were sought out, and work began to chug forward. Kathmandu, and its walls, has not looked back since.
Snatches of this creative outburst now await you at the Valley’s many different unsuspecting corners. Sattya’s mural tour itself begins at the premises of the Central Zoo, the walls of which have now been converted into giant canvasses. Here, one can see various artworks, each with a story of its own. We forged on, from one mural to the next but one particular mural forced me to do a double-take. Painted in 2013 by an international artist, Ricole, it shows a masked cow standing over a patch of natural grass. Given how polluted Kathmandu has become, the artistic vision feels prophetic. At the very least, it tugs at how some things will never change here in our dustbowl Valley. Either way, the artist had been able to create an image that serves as a prod for those who are paused by its simple, yet powerful message—giving it all the more symbolic value. It might have a preceding back story, but the mural seemed not nearly done creating stories—it could yet inspire and spark more conversations going forward.
Next, we moved on to Kupondole. Here, on one of the walls, a famous Taplejung folklore has been brought to life. It tells a story of a shepherd who mysteriously lost all of his sheep one day. And the very night as he slept he had a dreamy vision where God said if he sacrificed a sheep all of his lost sheep would return. The next day, the shepherd bought a sheep and sacrificed it. And almost as mysteriously as they’d disappeared they reappeared As I learnt about the folklore, it occurred to me how murals could be an efficient means of telling a story of a story. The connection of one art with another form of art created a different magic altogether.
I had always been fascinated by these murals and loved the colour they had brought to the city, but there is so much more than meets the eye. The Sattya mural tour was not just about the murals and the stories behind them but an in-depth conversation about how the mural came to be, the challenges and the issues faced, and the visions being articulated. Any work of art is a labour of love, but when done on giant canvasses under the elements, the fruits somehow seem all the sweeter. And the best part is that the art form is still evolving. Last month, artist Martin Traver’s beautiful reinterpretation of the Lakhey and the man behind it, at Om Bahal, made a big splash at the recently-concluded Kathmandu Triennale 2017. He recently completed another one, equally fascinating, at Jhonchhen. As long as there are empty walls in the Valley (and there are many), the project continues.
If you too are interested in taking a guided mural tour, you can book yourself one through Sattya’s Facebook page. But if wandering around town with strangers is not quite your cup of tea, you can always do it yourself, at your own leisure. Herein lies the catch, the murals are always “just there”, waiting for you to stop, to muse and to interact with them. Never demanding, never soliciting, these canvases might be colourful but they are incomplete. You bring them a full circle with what you yourself bring to the wall.
And that is the dharma of murals.