I know to live life
I know to love life
I know to live life
The 28-metre-long pathway leading to the Krishna Mandir of Bhaktapur Durbar Square was uniquely made of colorful cloth patches sewn together.[break]
This pathway was actually an installation art piece of Manish Lal Shrestha, the renowned contemporary artist of Nepal, and it created waves around the world.
The tragedy though with installation art is that it can only be preserved momentarily. So for people who could not experience firsthand what the historical art piece was all about, this is an attempt to reintroduce it after six years.
“It was one of the most important works for me,” shares Shrestha, “as it had many of my sentimental values attached with it.”
The country was in unrest, and the artist felt a strong need for unification. Shrestha, whose paintings are dominated by bells, did not leave out the item in his installation piece, too. The artist in fact expounded his tapestry artwork from the big temple bell.
The most interesting part for the artist was when people walking by participated in creating the installation. Shrestha recalls that during the 10 days when the art piece was set up, more than 100 people joined in to sew the cloths together.
“I always wanted my art to be interactive,” shares Shrestha, beaming with enthusiasm, “and seeing people connect to my work, building up that intimacy level, right there I felt the contentment of being an artist.”
For Shrestha, the tapestry was more of a pathway to faith and cosmic energy than a religious walk. It also symbolized the various ups and down in the course of life, and the inevitable end of it all.
Shrestha says that the installation was actually a continuity of his series “Sound of Hope.” Sewing the scraps of cloths with threads symbolized interconnections in hopes of unifying and bringing people together.
As the artist values every detail he uses in his work, he deliberately chose to work with the particular type of cloth. The first reason being it was local and handmade, and secondly, his mother used to make such fabric. That added a more personal touch to his work.
The conceptual artist always loved getting his viewers involved in his work. And by making people walk on the patchwork of cloths that he considers to be our second skin, he literally made people feel the closeness one can have with art as life.
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