BFA Exhibition 2022: Exuberant Involvement And A Lesson In Being Yourself

The desperate search for newness is an eternal reality for the artist. Despite the gargantuan immensity of the human experience, crafting a memorable artistic experience is a challenge every single time. A true engagement in the moment and in the story being told — at its best, that’s what we hope to get out of a visit to an art exhibition.

Real immersion, one that causes genuine excitement, can be rare as is. But living as we are in a society where artistic endeavors are delegated to insulated corners, disregarded by the larger community, one must assume that taking on the role of the artist would be a tough task. You need put so much effort into finding your tribe. One may even go so far as to imagine that the small tribe you build would ultimately hold undue influence upon your artistic vision; their opinions all too powerful, their gaze all too strong.

The BFA Exhibition Project holds a special exuberance that sits at contrast with this cloistered vision. Behind it sits a large community of artists and art students who have learned and grown together for a number of years, supported each others’ meditations, and held hands across novel experiments. Happening each year as the final year project of every batch of the KU Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, one can even see it as emblematic of the budding trends in Nepal’s art scene.

For a close friend of mine, this year’s iteration stood out as the best one she had been to. She has been visiting the yearly art exhibition religiously for five or so years. I remember visiting the BFA a few times over the years; once even as a young teenager. The memories of those visits muddle together, starting from a time when I didn’t even have the capacity to connect with visual art.

But walking into the Art Council a few days ago, I was treated to one of my most unique and memorable experiences with art. It’s been three years since I received my bachelor’s degree. Fade cuts have given way to wolf cuts. In concept, I see the artists behind this vibrant exhibition as a collection of young minds who were put in a place of power and knowledge early on, and quickly knew what they wanted to do with it. Of course, these artists may well be figuring themselves out, and most of them probably are. But every exhibit exuded a sense of self-surety even in the midst of this process. Its a revelation for someone like myself, who has always been deluded by a kind of magical thinking, where the fulfilment of one requirement (“figuring my shit out”) automatically makes all of life’s problems go away.

The perfect evidence of this life-affirming confidence was a popular exhibit on the ground floor. The BFA Exhibition is rare in that it is visited yearly by people of all ages, the most interesting groups being the couples in their 30’s who come along with their young children. But this exhibit was almost exclusively flocked by teenagers and young adults, at least when I was there. In my mind, this felt quite right, because it's they who are overturning generations of culture built on hate and stigma and etching out a culture of love and acceptance in its place. At this exhibit, this was happening quite literally, by their own hand. At any given time, a number of people were hunched over the desk, fawning over the free stationery, intent on sharing their happy place with the world based on a few handy prompts pasted on the wall. I also drew my happy place and added it to the many others.

The new artist also knows that it is right to revel in the magic of the mundane. To be sure, this idea is nothing new; but visit any renowned gallery in the valley and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything but stories of heft and stature, too serious to be taken lightly. The new artist has taken off this oppressive weight and taken to telling their stories at their own pace.

Painted delicately and with great attention to detail upon small square slabs of not-paper, the artist has captured snapshots of all those small details that encapsulate our daily life. There is so much to dive into. The choice of subjects in each of those square slabs tells so much. Our artist is potentially a smoker — at the very least, they revel in the teashop conversations.

Our artist definitely drives, maybe even enjoys it. Our artist has been taken in by all those random bits and pieces that make up a home, and stay on in the nooks of every residence to make it homely. The stainless steel tap that has the peculiar curve popular in plumbing products from 20 years ago. The plastic clip that you buy from a wandering salesman holding onto a synthetic clothesline found in every Nepali terrace. The rusted lock with a lost key that your parents bought for a small chest during another day and age. And wall-mounted switches. Wall-mounted switches that have the peculiar curve popular in switch designs from 20 years ago. Wall-mounted switches that have a layer of black grime half-covered over by a shoddy repainting just a few years back. Wall-mounted switches that have replaced those original, off-white ones just this past year, and no longer seem to fit anything just right.

There is a lot of magic to be had in the mundane. These intricate images of everyday things capture childhood wonder; the respite of adulthood; the dreary visual signs of time passing that you see every single day. It’s not something with heft and substance and seriousness. But it is what life is; it is nothing more or less.

Taking up one corner was a series of photographs arranged in beautific harmony, small and big frames. The project belonged to Niranjan Maharjan, and apparently took seven years to come to fruition. His project sought to capture the life of an institution that is near and dear to many Nepalis — the bhattis and the chiya pasals.

Credit: Amy Santiago

The photos were taken over the course of seven years during which he diligently visited popular and obscure teashops in the farthest corners of Kathmandu valley, in every single direction. To make sure he could capture the candid nature of the conversations correctly, he would befriend regular customers over the course of many meetings beforehand. He even has the phone numbers of many of his subjects, and was in touch with them after all this time.

For the end exhibit, Maharjan printed out the photos on lokta paper, pasted them on wooden frames, and smeared some rato mato on the sides. All this patience and attention to detail, over the course of seven years, was so that he could correctly fulfil his artist’s mission and capture the true soul of these teashops.

The images seemed to glow with an unearthly light that was so rich and true-to-life that it almost whisked you away to those moments, frozen in time. The tiniest details were observed and captured, holding their own sense to those teashop owners, now documented for futurity. Steel glasses stacked up layers upon layers. Utensils that see daily use hanging perfectly on a smoke-blackened wall. A man chugging a glass of his daily solace, ordered probably with a furtive look and a subtle gesture. A man lost in pure, unadulterated thought, drowning in worries.

Credit: Amy Santiago

Wireless earphones were offered, that constantly played out real, candid conversations captured in these teashops. Putting them on and examining those photographs one by one transported you to this recreation of all those bhattis with shocking ease and an unerring accuracy. One would take great care to relish every single photograph before moving on to the next.

Seven years of visiting the most obscure teashops, getting to know the regulars, earning their trust, and photographing them in their most authentic moments, to hit the nail right on the head. It is a mission completed successfully.

The exhibits that stood out the most, and in a way defined BFA 2022, were the ones that patently refused to sit inside the conventional definitions of art. To me, a core element that drove the sense of artistic wonder while experiencing these works was the very fact that, in 2022, artists have confidently published video games and resource-hoarding board games as their final art projects, and were able to proudly showcase them at the Art Council. The realization that this act of self-surety split open the very prospects for the future of art in the valley, evoked a great sense of respect and appreciation for the exhibition and all its artists.

The most elaborate application of this confident access to knowledge was evidenced in the installation titled IN(within) by Momin Pradhan.

Pradhan set the atmosphere inside a dark chamber, where the walls were fitted with geometric shapes. Visitors were handed out cardboard “bricks”, and would then go around touching these bricks to the shapes on the walls. Some of them gradually lit up as the bricks came close, and faded out once again as the bricks were taken away. Sometimes, the shapes simply wouldn’t light up. This was Pradhan’s way of expressing, in very intimate terms, mankind’s innate search for connection — and how, sometimes, this search goes wayward and we lose all connection with life. The idea that these boxes lit up with touch felt strange and uncomfortable; you had to get up close and push the brick right up against the different shapes, and then when the shapes didn’t light up, you had to understand that the connection had simply died out with no explanations left behind.

Weaving in with many of the artworks were secret references to a tragic incident that affected the entire batch of BFA 2022. Hearing the story in passing, I could only wonder the kind of impact this incident must have made on every single one of the artists presenting in the exhibition. The BFA Exhibition 2022 was synergetic; it was defined by positivity, confidence, and participatory experience. You had to play the game to understand the story of Gathamaga Charhey. You had to sit down with the toy houses and play the cards to experience the fun in it. At every turn, you were subliminally being encouraged to be yourself, to do you, and to do so with a great enthusiasm.

I wonder now if all these threads came together with this incident. I could personally discover only one of the many dedications to the one who was lost in that incident.

The BFA Exhibition 2022 was one of the most memorable art experiences of my life. Stepping into the Art Council, I was completely taken in by the many exhibits that demanded your participation, only to give back with full immersion in the experience. But at this point, a few days on, it's the passion of its many creators and artists, and more than that, it was their will to be themselves, radiating in each artwork, that stands out as clearly as daylight.