If creating a work of art takes a lot of effort and time, showcasing them can actually be harder, especially when you are an aspiring artist fresh off the blocks. Not every aspiring artist can afford the gallery fees needed to host an exhibition at the Capital’s many art spaces; and, even if they do, the work may not easily be accepted or generate revenue. Which is why, it was not uncommon for young artists to fold their dreams for want of exposure. 

But that now has changed for good measure since the introduction of the monthly Art Market, a vibrant platform for up-and-coming artists, put together jointly by Image Ark and the Yellow House.  

If you walk into the Yellow House in Sanepa on the first Saturday of every month, you will have walked in for a veritable mine of surprises. Greeting you will be an array of stalls featuring artworks—made in Nepal by a clutch of promising new artists—and as you start to explore these stalls, you are bound to uncover a host of items that will tickle your fancy. 

When I chanced upon the market today, I was welcomed by the members of the band Tejas Gold & The Gang, conducting a sound check before their set. Further down was the organisers Image Ark’s stall, which featured works by Erina Tamrakar and Julian Parker Burns. The works included paitings, landscape photographs and portraits, and some embossed sculptures. The stall was curated by Swojan Newa, art director at the Patan-based Image Ark Studio. Newa summed up the stall by saying: “Although some of these works were previously exhibited elsewhere, some of these would have probably never been seen by the public. Which is the very motive of this platform: to bring these little pieces of artworks up in to public view.” 

A little further down the line was a stall by the now popular jewellery-outfit Kaligarh, featuring new collections for the new season—silver-plated, gold-plated and brass-plated—which, as its curator explained, were contemporary pieces incorporating traditional styles and techniques. Something similar to Kaligarh’s was Tissah’s stall; the stall featured handbags, and jewellery, which came with a message, Love and Treasure Yourself. “This piece of jewellery,” Eta Shrestha of Tissah showcased, “It has two Mayas facing each other coined into it in Nepalbhasa. The meaning: The Love you give is the love you get-which is the maxim our venture embraces and tries to showcase through these works.” 

Equally fascinating were Dhartimata’s stall, Eco-Happy Period, featuring totes, and menstrual pads made out of organic cotton; Slim & Saedi, a newly-minted fictional characters adorning artsy calendars; Kolpa’s sustainable bags made from leather and cotton; Samrajya, a Nepali board game; and Little Things, featuring DIY calendars and quirky mugs, among many other curiosities.

The art market is not your typical gallery, nor does it aspire to be. But here you will find a menagerie of young artists bursting with creativity, and not yet reined in by the burdens of commercialisation. From painting and photographs to clothing and jewellery tied together by palpable vitality, the Art Market, which was first conceived in 2015, is now more than just a market; it is a community.