Walking into Image Ark in Patan, you are pleasantly surprised by the unexpected texture of silkscreen printing on canvas. Silkscreen is a popular vehicle for commercial design in Nepal and this is one of the rare occasions in Nepal that it has been put to the service of artmaking proper. About twenty-eight acrylic pieces by Canadian artist Robin Luoma grace the meandering walls of the two floors at Image Ark. 

You start with the straggly Awake created about six weeks ago and the artist’s first piece on Nepal. Luoma was visiting the country as a post-earthquake rehabilitation volunteer at Melamchi when the urge to paint (or rather make prints) 

overwhelmed her and she cut short her self-imposed hiatus from art. 

On the way upstairs, you 

encounter the aquatic resonance of Indrawati in Melamchi Riverside till you reach the fiery orange-red-yellow of Tiger, the nickname for 

the local hero leading the rehabilitation and relief effort. Upstairs it is in fact all sunny yellows, oranges and reds—a burst of daylight colours burst across the canvases in a 

flurry of brilliant warm tones and shards of white—carrying through Luoma’s fascination with the 

ever present sun even at the peak of winter, the sway of marigold garlands, the glorious prints on local clothing. Especially the clothing. What a joy it is to watch womenfolk go about, unceremonious and on everyday chores, in the most brilliant of prints and hues. Coming from Canada, where winters are dark and somber, finding so much of colour in January was a true revelation for her.

Screen-printed acrylic on canvas is a medium she has worked with for years, and the mixing of necessary brushwork with the familiar geometrical shapes from her repertoire creates an excitement throughout—be it on canvas or lokta paper. My favourite piece remains Flightpath, justher second work here and yet so confident in grid-making and conveying the apprehended visual memory of passengers on airplanes  that continually roar overhead her rooftop. Starmanis a tribute to Bowie and is exemplary in that it reveals its inspiration through shapes, layers, and colours, and may in fact provide the route map for negotiating the exhibition. Wit is integral to her way of looking—for example a piece called Much can only be fully appreciated after one discovers that the otherwise pleasing arrangement of chromatic layers are in fact a commentary on the onslaught on the senses that the artist experiences on a daily basis in Nepal.

Luoma is a self-professed admirer of pop art and the show is appropriately titled Pop in Nepal. But her pop is aligned more with abstract expressionism than the figurative or textual exuberance and socio-cultural critique that one generally associates the movement with. She delights in the possibilities offered by the process of silkscreen printing in terms of layering, haze and the elusive.

It is an interesting show that perhaps stops with the visually pleasing and is predicated on the viewer’s emotive response. But no harm in such pleasure especially in a country which is still writing in the grip of disasters of various kinds.

The show continues at Image Ark till March 20.