Blazing heat of the mid-August afternoon is the least Laxman Shrestha cares about as his paintbrush spreads color over the shoddy-looking wall of Bir Hospital.
The road by the Hospital is one of the busiest in Kathmandu, where tens of thousands of pedestrians pass by daily and there couldn’t be a better place for him to get a bigger audience.
The final image is of a silhouette of a headless woman, dark blue and sitting on her knees against the sky blue backdrop, her palms pressed together in a gesture of pleading.
"Since time immemorial Nepali women have been oppressed," says Laxman, a student of abstract art at the Lalit Kala Campus, "and they still are. The state seems reluctant to heed to their demand to ensure equal citizenship rights in the new constitution, although they have been vocal about it."
Through Laxman's art, the quelled voices of the oppressed and grievances of the society speak out aloud
When he realized art was his vocation and decided to set everything aside to focus on it, he was determined not confine his creations in small canvasses within the boundaries of art galleries for viewing and critique by art critics and small - mostly educated - audience. He wanted them to occupy larger spaces that are easily accessible to the common men, who can be the real agents of change.
That was in 2012. Around him, the nation waited in desperation for the new constitution as political turmoil pushed it to increasing uncertainty. His first street art, which came the same year, captured this conflict - 'Samsad versus Janata' (Constituent Assembly vs People) floated in the middle of the busy street of New Road Chowk in his hometown Nepalgunj.
Since then, Laxman has spilled his colors on the untended walls and streets of the capital and other parts of the country, depicting political, social, identity issues and the common sentiments. Through his art, an unborn child pleads against abortion, a woman burnt alive by her husband tells her story ('Jalayiyeki Ma'), and the country rises up from the rubble of the devastation inflicted by powerful earthquake.
When he decided to be an artist, within him he had his own struggles and frustrations, feeling of being unheard and not understood - sentiments common to many Nepali youths but also very personal. "My art became an outlet for the public sentiments," Shrestha shares. "But I realized that unconsciously I was also putting my own."
And there was more to motivate him. "As an artist, I felt a unique experience to have audience look at my work right when I was in the process of creating it," he says. It was a delight to him to have a crowd keenly following the movements of his brush. He recalls that some would even wait for hours to see the complete work.
For an aspiring artist nothing could be more encouraging than this.
Although, he gives equal devotion to all his work, Laxman especially mentions two.
In 2013, as an expression of a collective claiming of Gautam Buddha by millions of Nepalis after a tele-serial in Indian channel Zee TV claimed Buddha was born in India, murals on the walls of Bir Hospital and Kohalpur in west Nepal showed Buddha's gentle, curved eyes slightly drop from a serene face, beside which proudly floated the bright red of Nepali flag against the blue backdrop.
In 2014, 'Jalayiyeki Ma' (Burnt Me), a mural on the wall of Bir Hospital inspired by 25-year old Rihana Sheikh, who was allegedly burnt by her husband on a dowry case, depicted the gruesome picture of domestic violence and the ills that still haunt Nepali society.
There's too much turmoil in Nepal, especially political. And there're social, cultural and economic problems intertwined with it, leading to frustrations among people," Laxman says. "The direct impact of this turmoil is felt more powerfully in the cities because of the proximity to and access to information about political happenings." He says publicly available art could be medium of collectively expressing and these, an outlet and relief psychologically.
But Laxman's brushstrokes have not only focused on the issues that have occupied the center stage; they have also traced concerns far from the notice and interest of general public. In 2014, his painting on the façade of a house in Nawalparashi showcasing a vulture, perched on a shagged leafless branch whose color has turned black, its neck turned to the back and desolately looking at a distance, urged for the preservation of the endangered bird.
Likewise, when the government budget in 2014 included plan to build east-west railroad cutting through the Chitwan National Park, Laxman's 'Bikash versus Binash' (Development vs Destruction) painting posed to the audience the question of where we should draw line between development and nature conservation.
At Lalit Kala Campus, Shrestha is learning to fine-tune his brushstrokes. The young artist has his own struggles of having to face social pressure from family and relatives who regard he has gone astray with his vocation for painting, and there are certainly the financial challenges individuals who choose art as their profession face in developing country like Nepal.
But he says that like all artists his biggest contentment comes when people look and admire his work. He explains there's more his art achieves. "People stop to look when I'm working. And they begin to talk. One asks a question, and the other onlooker answers. This is what my work does – it makes people talk. Ultimately, it's the psyche of the masses where the roots of all social problems lie, and the solutions too. It's the talk between two individuals or contemplation which sows the seeds of awareness or instigate public discourse."
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