CONNECT
With CONNECT, Kaalo.101 and International Design Collective built personal and professional relations between contemporary artists and the heritage field, artistic practices, and communities of the traditional context we are surrounded by. We wanted to challenge and question ourselves and our practice by connecting to professionals who are willing to share their skills, experiences, and admiration for the environment around us and are working in the field of cultural heritage. We believe that this kind of exchange will not only lead to mutual understanding and validation but that this effort is crucial to conserve cultural heritage and continue the narratives around these traditions.
Through the project, we created a friendly environment of exchange and guidance: Ten contemporary artists were engaged in six different workshops to understand the traditional context and get insights from different involved professions, their perspectives, and skills which are needed to preserve cultural heritage: Six mentors with different professional backgrounds – Rabindra Puri, Krishna Ram Chitrakar, Sunil Barahi, Ashok Prajapati, Babu Ratna Maharjan, and Dharma Raj Shakya – provided sessions, in which they explained their engagement in heritage projects, shared insights on their activities and gave practical prompts to the ten artists. Each of the provided sessions focused on different materialities and practices: Architecture, painting, wood, mud, metal, and stone.
We wanted to transform the learning experience into active creation and implement the accessed knowledge from this exchange into visible outcomes: The involved participants produced contemporary artworks that respond to their experiences of the time and space they shared on the ground during CONNECT with the mentors of the cultural heritage field.
The goal of this project was to CONNECT: Mentors and participants came together and created an engaging and inspiring learning environment and exchanged traditional and contemporary perspectives – a collaboration we wish to continue, strengthen and elaborate in the future.
PC:Â @ztstha
ARTISTS:Â @anjilamanandhar @dhiraj_manandhar @vaidya.hitesh @mlart.21 @nilessakya @snzsrr @sazeed_shakya_art @seemronrana @tdsuraz