Sitting beside a river

August 30, 2020

 “Sitting beside a River “is my personal response to the world around me. The work investigates inter-cultural dialogue, diaspora peoples, and cross-cultural interconnection. What drives my interest in creating this work is the mass migration of the British Gurkha ethnicity to UK. Consent of ILR (indefinite leave to remain in the UK) has become a quest for the Gurkha family members. They and migrating, searching for a contemporary wonderland.

I come from a British Gurkha family background. My family is all currently residing in Greater London. I don’t have British citizenship therefore, my family, relatives and associates are struggling to locate me in this land (the UK). But I chose not to pursue this direction.

The Project imagines a river by interlocking one hundred airport trolleys in a long fluid curvilinear row (without any manipulation in their normal state). Here the river appears as metaphor for both the uncontrollable forces of nature and life, just as the river is constantly changing, becoming sometimes fierce and sometimes favorable, it reminds us of our responsibility to navigate through deluge of our life and paints a mental picture of the hypnotic effect of the passage of time.

The energy of these familiar objects brings forth the memories and their airport experiences and the memories of their journey before leaving home.

I did a 3 months of research around the departure area of Kathmandu International airport observing the arriving and departing along this metaphorical channel. People passing through airports daily suggests the merging of different rivers; this is the moment when the river passes through a delta to become part of the great sea. The sea is all about us.

The project is about the memory, love, dreams, experiences and stories as Gurkhas, a tale of where we came from, and where we can be found now.  

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