Kathmandu:

When we think of art, more often than not, we conceive of strokes of paints on the canvass or a sculpture or something similar. Hardly we conceive of performance art — an alternative art media that is fast catching up in the art scenario here, especially among the young artists.

With an intention to popularise this art media more, a young artists’ forum, Bindu organised a two-day ‘little Movement in town’ performance art event near Babermahal Revisited on January 25 and January 26.

A total of ten young artists, including one from Bangladesh, displayed their art that dwelt on diverse themes. Ashmina Ranjit had a political theme in her art, which tried to show how the politicians try to silence the innocent people’s anger by promising sweet things yet doing nothing. The politicians, symbolised by a male voice, sings a lullaby, something traditionally done by women, to an ‘adult child’, highlighting the male domination in politics.

Prithivi Shrestha’s performance tried to show how we try to hide our corrupt reality by superficial adherence to purity. While performing his art, Shrestha dressed in golden cloth offered silver colour Momos (gold and silver standing for ‘purity’) to people. However, under a ‘pure’ cloak, the momo has ‘impure’ thing inside, after coming to know which he tries to purify himself by sprinkling gold. “We know we are doing wrong, but we do things in spite of that and superficially try to purify ourselves by sprinkling ‘pure’ things,” Shrestha shared.

Sunil Sigdel’s performance dwelt on the conflicting nature of the globalisation and borders, how with the intensification of globalisation, the different types of boundaries between countries play an opposing role.

The others participants were Jupiter Pradhan, Mahabubur Rahaman, Manish Lal Shrestha, Sangee Shrestha, Sunita Rana, Saurganga Darshandhari, and Sudarshan Bikram Rana.

“We wish to take this little initiative to have a performance art festival,” shared Pradhan, also a member of Bindu.