The exhibition currently on at the Nepal Art
Council (NAC) could command the space at any great
The
odd thing is, many art lovers may never have had the privilege of viewing these
works in person, others still may not even have heard of the artist, the
greatest of her generation, perhaps even the greatest living Nepali artist
today. This is mainly because while Giri has had exhibitions in Nepal (at NAC
in 2016 and 2018), and her works travelled to the watershed Nepal Art Now show
in Vienna in 2019, she lives and works in Norway with her architect husband,
Hans Christie Bjonness; pieces from her oeuvre have not been easily available,
therefore, to lend out to amalgam shows domestically, creating a void in the
art world here.
Her
public sculptures at the Rashtriya Beema Sansthan, Tribhuwan University in
Kirtipur, and the Rashtriya Banijya Bank Head Office in Ram Shah Path Road,
among others, remain on view for those in the know, but her contributions to
Nepal in the form of these massive, searing sculptures, and her 18 years of
service teaching at the Lalit Kala Campus as a founding professor of the Fine
Arts programme, have faded from recent memory, remaining only in the minds of
the older generations of artists she nurtured; the younger generations of
makers, while many have visited the show, remain mostly oblivious to this
legend that came before them.
Thankfully,
this will change with the establishment of the Pramila Giri Foundation, an
institution that will house her works and include her own home and sculpture
garden in Bishal Nagar. The former was designed by Bjonness on a commission
from his spouse who had envisioned her home and sculpture garden decades ago as
part of her legacy to
It
is the energy of life itself, not just spirit, that is embodied in these
mystical paintings. Giri does not use a brush, she uses her own hands to create
the strokes, feeling the need to physically touch the canvas, using a scraper
to shape the colours and texture, and a cloth to smoothen the surfaces. This
tactile approach is perhaps the reason why nothing is lost between artist and
canvas, with no brush to obstruct the energy between artist and artwork; the
result is pieces of art that are uncannily, enchantingly, both ancient and
modern, feminine and masculine—the translation of something pure and meditative
into palpable art.
With
her sculptures, Giri works first within her mind’s eye, seeing a form that she
then translates into sculpture using the lost wax technique, slowly the form
emerges, and with it, her choice of medium; she works across wood, metal,
cement, plaster of Paris, and the softer soapstone and limestone, preferring
their grain and malleability to that of the harder marble. Her first preference
is that of sculpture; she sees herself foremostly as a creator, transcending
the boundaries of her gender, using her training during her formative years at
Shantiniketan to incorporate the values of social connection and a deep
learning from nature into the art. Perhaps this is why no matter how abstract
her forms and shapes, the tangible spirit that embraces humanity, beauty, and
purity, but avoids dry asceticism, remains on in the creation, allowing us to
connect with it on a personal level.
Meeting the artist explains much of the power
of her work. Delicate and diminutive (she sometimes needs a ladder to access
the higher parts of her enormous canvases), her gentleness and curiosity shine
through with every engagement, her bright eyes looking out into this world with
thoughtful observation. At this exhibition, she can be seen sitting in a chair
with a thermos beside her, offering cups of tea to all the people who may want
to speak with her, generously giving her time and wisdom, particularly to the
younger people who all seem completely floored by the works they are surrounded
by.
It is rare to meet a living artist of this
stature and have access to her thoughts and presence. And while it is never
possible to completely know another person, much less an artist, perhaps an
anecdote may help: when Bjonness first met Giri in 1977, it was his first visit
to
It
is difficult to convey the true gravity of the works on display at the NAC, the
canvases in the Bagmati Gallery’s upper-level change with the light; one could
be there all day watching the subtle changes in tone and texture, caught in a
blissful meditation, gaping at their limpid purity. Then there are the
mind-blowing mixed media canvas sculptures on the lower floor of the Bagmati
Gallery that combine the artist’s formidable, vivid paintings with her pulsing,
dynamic metal sculptures, resulting in an experience that defies explanation,
almost as if viewing a god or goddess come to earth in an alien, robotic,
hypnotic form.
I
leave you with a remark made by an astute viewer: as I wandered slowly from
canvas to canvas, I overheard a young woman say that she could see the universe
in the eyes of a painting. I swung around, moved by her remark to look again,
and I saw it too: the universe through the third eye of the artist herself. It
is this ability to convey the infinite with a few strokes that makes Giri’s art
so very divine.
‘Through My Third Eye’ is on display at the
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