Asia
Karan Shrestha
Meanwhile
2017
Meanwhile, 2017 (still)
After the decade-long conflict (1996-2006) that ended with Nepal becoming a Federal Democratic Republic, political unrest and weak governance continued to mark the country’s future as daily life repeatedly witnessed ruptures. From accessing essentials to employment, education, compensation, legal justice, health facilities, and human rights, the people of Nepal have been forced to wait. Meanwhile by Karan Shrestha records moments of impasse as the post-conflict period dragged on. The simple yet effective video speaks to how waiting has become a cultural pastime.
Karan Shrestha’s practice portrays the social tensions and historical complexities embodied in the social fabric of Nepal. His drawings, sculpture, photographs, films, and texts speak to the complex, entangled relations of the county's recent history. Shrestha has been particularly invested in addressing subjects around caste society, negligence and absence by the State, and global migrant labor; a dehumanising reality in which Nepalese (mostly men from the countryside) represent a vast population as ‘guest workers’ in different corners of the world, in particular India, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Shrestha’s projects are thus a synthesis of what the artist calls an “archive of the terrain”, where political histories, transient memories and a speculative world that suspends reality all intertwine as forms of critique to globalisation, imported ideas of progress and failed developmentist utopias.