When facing the QR code for this stop there is a low, white plinth directly to your left that juts out into the gallery space where the artwork is displayed.
My name is Karan Shrestha. For the past few years, I have been making artworks surveying the state of water in Nepal. There are several reasons for this, ranging from the ecological to the political to the personal, which has moved me to create, ‘water-givers, memory-keepers, and the shifting forces’.
The work includes a textile, three large ink drawings, metal vessels and a wooden sculpture. This installation runs the length of the wall to the left for about four meters, with a low, undulating plinth that juts out into the gallery space.
Moving from right to left, the first object in the installation is a large cotton textile hanging on the wall. There are two vertical stripes of green on either side, with a channel of blue in the middle. At the top of the textile, large pink e-coli bacteria swim in a pool of black.
The textile speaks to the storage of water and poorly managed sanitation in Nepal, which creates conditions for bacteria to spread and multiply. According to data from the Department of Health Service in Nepal, about 3,500 children die each year due to waterborne diseases.
To the left of the textile, we come to the first painting in this suite of three, which hangs vertically in the space. This work centres around GLOFs – or glacial lake outburst floods.
The Himalayas, the youngest mountain range on Earth, is inherently unstable and battered by heavy monsoon rains from June to September. Nepal’s mountainous terrain makes it highly prone to floods, flash floods, GLOFs and landslides – and a changing climate intensifies the frequency and severity of natural disasters.
On the top left of this vertical painting, we find the face of an elderly woman emerging from rock formations. She is a landscape. From her right eye, a tear streams down to form a river being dammed, blocked or redirected for human use. To the right of this, a landslide is rendered in rapid flowing strokes, buildings, vehicles and people caught up in the deluge.
Relative to its population, Nepal has the highest fatality rate from landslides. The village we see between the waters on the right side is the Thame settlement that was washed away by a GLOF in 2024.
Finally at the bottom, the image becomes a mythical aquatic creature carrying people and a cow. This image builds on the myth of the Dudh Koshi river, which flows in the Khumbhu region of Nepal. Legend has it that the river was formed by tears of a grieving mother-goddess who lost her children. It is widely accepted that human beings are the only species that shed emotional tears.
As we move to the top right of this painting there is a group of women in conversation. Their bodies are snow-clad mountains. Across most communities in Nepal, women are the storytellers and elders who guide the subsequent generations. The work here isn’t limited to depicting floods, but attempts to get at oral traditions that encapsulate how we remember, process and pass down events and experiences.
Moving left, we come to the second ink painting which hangs lower down, the bottom of it curving towards you. Rendered in a lighter grey, it shows a woman lying asleep, holding a shape resembling a crocodile. The geometry of lines around her face suggest an urban setting. However, she seems to float above the ground. Perhaps carried by water.
In many cultures across Nepal, water isn’t limited to a resource for consumption and profit. Rather, a life-giving force that heals as well as witnesses the shifts of time and place. Here, the water reveals to the woman, deep-time. In the droplets are creatures from different ages, and the formation of lands. The woman, drowning and being swallowed, or embracing while rising, surrenders to the memories offered by water.
To the left, the final largest painting is hung lengthways with a gentle curve. It is dominated by a vast, spindly Aedes aegypti mosquito painted in high-contrast black and white that looms over the viewer. Dengue, transmitted by this vector, is now considered endemic in Nepal, as humans get infected throughout the year.
In the top centre of the painting, over the mosquito wing, a young girl lies in a hospital bed, protected by a meshed curtain. The tube providing saline solution extends to another hand of a patient in the distance, emerging from mosquito larvae.
In 2024, over 40,000 people were infected, causing 15 deaths, with the Aedes aegypti mosquito being discovered at higher altitudes compared to previous records. The surge in cases during the post-monsoon period caused a blood crisis, leading to a health infrastructure breakdown.
At the bottom of the painting, the giant mosquito leg morphs into a ship hinting at its origin in sub-Saharan Africa and its spread through maritime commerce, imperial expansion and the transatlantic slave trade. Another mosquito leg on the top right transforms to an airplane, as this insect continues to travel to human settlements.
Within the insect’s abdomen is an entire city upturned. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes thrive in urban environments, breeding in discarded tyres and artificial containers with clear standing water that is easily found across Nepal due to water scarcity during the hot and dry seasons.
The bottom right of the painting shows people waiting for water from a government pipe. The unequal distribution of water, like the unequal distribution of wealth in Nepal, is characteristic of poor governance and a growing class difference.
The final piece in the installation is a carved woodwork sitting on the plinth. In the woodwork, the fingers of a cupped pair of hands holding a fossil morph into snakes that exhale forms suggesting clouds or foliage. For most indigenous communities across Nepal, snakes are guardians of water, essential to the harmonious balance within ecologies. The worship of snakes prompts people in Nepal to maintain hydrological continuityx that is a sacred as well as a social duty to remember that water is shared by all life forms.
This is the end of Stop 6.