Art Appreciation: My experience in Bikalpa Art Center (BAC)'s Artist in Residency

Installation Art (Conceptual Art)

How do living beings (you) feel if someone ended locking them (you) inside the cage.Why don’t we change this practice and let everybody live as they want in this world? Why don’t we trap our evil thought instead of innocent lives (Birds, Animals, or human)?

Bishal (Bhaikaji) Manandhar, Nepal.

Pinjada (पिंजडा) (Cage), 2013

Mixed Media (Plastics, cotton cloths, newspaper, iron cage)

104" x 60" (size variable)

That’s what I am trying to state and aware my viewers through my art installation work called Pinjada (Cage).

I made one really big cage out of transparent plastic and hanged one real cage in the middle of that big cage, where I trapped origami bird in it.

The viewer’s show their sympathy to the bird and entered to the big cage, they will feel same kind of uneasiness or suffocation.

At the same room, I installed other two art works.

One is with two small cages hanging at the two corners, and I requested visitors to write their evil thought and trap inside these cages and free themselves. On the other side I just hung three different materials like a piece of cotton, iron net and bobble plastic wrap to show various kind of suffocation or trap out there in real world.

Three different Materials

"Two cages to trap one's evil thought"
"आफु भित्रको राक्षसलाई कैद गरौ "

Zindagi (Life),

is the title of my second work.

If somebody asks me, “What is life?”

I don’t really know, but I took one small piece from huge puzzle and tried to focus on that point.

We will walk by our own path and tried to achieve big success in life. The problems appear then when we tend to forget our past, which somehow affects our life forever and stick to it.

I made an impression of footsteps all over the floor and hung these shoes around the trees. There wasn't one single shoes lying down on the floor, where I am indicating all the left footsteps and the gap between them. I felt that what we are doing these days, knowingly or unknowingly!

Shoes hanging form the tree

Bishal (Bhaikaji) Manandhar, Nepal.
Zindagi (जिन्दगी ) (Life), 2013
(shoes and color)
front yard of the gallery

One interesting thing about this residency is the controversy that creates by my work Zindagi (Life). Some people have strong objection of hanging shoes on the tree, indeed it’s more about placing them on the top of their head which consider as a bad luck and the house owner warned the curator of the gallery.

Bishal (Bhaikaji) Manandhar, Nepal.
Zindagi (जिन्दगी ) (Life), 2013

These works was done by me in ten days artist in residency by Bikalpa Art Center (BAC), called “Experimental Media and Performance” from 12^th August – 21^st August 2013. There are five national and five international artist including musician and performance artist with other visual artists as well.