Karan Shrestha
Karan Shrestha
We Exist (2018)
digital photographs
Stealing Earth (2018)
HD, 1920 x 1080
Mikania Micrantha (2021)
digital collage
Camouflage (2022)
fabric, artificial moss, wire, acrylic
Shared Sensualities (2020 -2021)
ink on paper
A Telling (2018)
poem
Chitwan National Park, the first protected area in Nepal, was established in 1973 after being a popular destination for hunting and trade amongst Nepal’s royalty and British colonists for over a century. Since then, it has become the face of biodiversity protection and tourism development. The national park has been steadily expanding over the years. This comes at the expense of the livelihood of indigenous communities such as Bote, Majhi, Musahar, Kumal, Chepang and Tharu that have faced evictions, loss of land, arrests, torture and sexual assault by armed forces. The protection area legislation, like many other laws in the new constitution that came into effect in 2015, is reminiscent of the autocratic monarchy state. The government can declare protected areas and buffer zones in any territory without consulting local and indigenous inhabitants of that area. stealing earth addresses how the rhetoric of conservation is used to enclose land, forest and water for the wealthy and powerful, while disenfranchising communities that have shared a symbiotic relationship with these environments for centuries.
Location: Gallery MMB, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai
© Karan Shresta
Karan Shrestha’s practice includes drawing, sculpture, photography, text, film and video that speak to the complex, entangled relations between people, time and place, probing at the fraught rhetoric of progress pertaining to Nepal’s recent history. Shrestha presents works that are an archive of physical landscapes, political histories, and transient memories, and a speculative world that suspends reality, creating space to contemplate notions of the present.
We Exist (2018)
digital photographs
Stealing Earth (2018)
HD, 1920 x 1080
Mikania Micrantha (2021)
digital collage
Camouflage (2022)
fabric, artificial moss, wire, acrylic
Shared Sensualities (2020 -2021)
ink on paper
A Telling (2018)
poem
Chitwan National Park, the first protected area in Nepal, was established in 1973 after being a popular destination for hunting and trade amongst Nepal’s royalty and British colonists for over a century. Since then, it has become the face of biodiversity protection and tourism development. The national park has been steadily expanding over the years. This comes at the expense of the livelihood of indigenous communities such as Bote, Majhi, Musahar, Kumal, Chepang and Tharu that have faced evictions, loss of land, arrests, torture and sexual assault by armed forces. The protection area legislation, like many other laws in the new constitution that came into effect in 2015, is reminiscent of the autocratic monarchy state. The government can declare protected areas and buffer zones in any territory without consulting local and indigenous inhabitants of that area. stealing earth addresses how the rhetoric of conservation is used to enclose land, forest and water for the wealthy and powerful, while disenfranchising communities that have shared a symbiotic relationship with these environments for centuries.
Location: Gallery MMB, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai
About the artist
© Karan Shresta
Karan Shrestha’s practice includes drawing, sculpture, photography, text, film and video that speak to the complex, entangled relations between people, time and place, probing at the fraught rhetoric of progress pertaining to Nepal’s recent history. Shrestha presents works that are an archive of physical landscapes, political histories, and transient memories, and a speculative world that suspends reality, creating space to contemplate notions of the present.