The Floating Hopes
Narayan Bohaju, July 2024
Artist’s Narrative
The Floating Hopes is influenced by the landscape of increasing Nepalese urbanization. Everyone has a dream to reach the heights despite their limited abilities, perhaps this is what our increasingly urban landscape is showing. It is our desire or compulsion to dream of touching the sky by leaning on a narrow place but it has become our reality. I have tried to express the building there with the tall and thin structures covered with dark colors of monochromatic style used in my paintings. The appearance and conditions of the house are showing the face of our lifestyle.
Although our life is going in the direction of artificiality in the desire of modernity, I believe that a spiritual light is naturally hidden inside every human being. And wanting to be close to nature is a spiritual glimpse within us. The water lily seems like a beautiful symbol of spirituality. Everyone’s heart is filled with positivity when they see beautiful and holy flowers blooming on the mud. I get a similar feeling when I see lily pads floating in the water. It seems that we are all living there under lust and the hope of being pure and natural is floating above us.
Work details:
Title: The Floating Hopes
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 42*84 inch
Created Year: 2023
Narayan Bohaju is an emerging contemporary artist from the cultural city Bhaktapur, Nepal. He has been involved in various experimental projects and participated in numerous group exhibition and art events in India and Nepal, including the 2nd Kathmandu International Art festival 2012, SAMHITA– national level seminar cum workshop, New Delhi 2011, and Artist in Residency at Goa organized by Indian Atelier in 2013.
He also contributed to Camp Hub Bhaktapur, a community art project related to the post-earthquake period in 2015. His artworks often depict objects that reflect people’s lives and contemporary situations. He did three solo exhibitions entitled ‘Color of Horizon’ 2009, ‘Song of Local Sounds’ 2012 and ‘Beyond the Object’ 2019. Since 2012, he has been a visiting faculty member at the Department of Art and Design at Kathmandu University.