Meet NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Nepal’s Festival Director Tackling Issues One Visual at a Time
Diverse public programming creates a conversation between a city and its people. | Photo: Chemi Dorje Lama

Meet NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Nepal’s Festival Director Tackling Issues One Visual at a Time

Every two years, Photo Kathmandu – Nepal’s biggest photo festival – breathes new life into the city of Patan, turning streets into exhibition spaces and passersby into spectators, with festival director NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati at the helm of it all.

It was in the autumn of 2015 that we were first introduced to Photo Kathmandu. Nepal was in the midst of an economic crisis, while still struggling to find its feet in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that had shaken up the entire country that April. Things were looking grim for many Nepalis.

In such sombre times, Photo Kathmandu, an international photo festival, took to the streets of Patan and breathed new life into the city. A photo festival taking place in the heart of Patan, where many of the old, traditional buildings and temples lay in ruins, was a little unexpected. But in retrospect, that is exactly what the city and its people needed: to fall back on the arts to make and create meaning, to share a common purpose, and to become a community that stands together.

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, the director of the Photo Kathmandu festival.
NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, the director of the Photo Kathmandu festival. | Photo: Sagar Chhetri

“The idea of a photo festival was in the works for a while. But we chose to go ahead with it in 2015 during such a tough time, because it felt like an important moment for something positive to happen,” said NayanTara. “For us as photographers also, we needed something hopeful to work on. In our own small way, we wanted to do something to bring people together and re-instil in them that community spirit we all needed at the time to rebuild.”

And that was exactly what it did. Since it started in 2015, Photo Kathmandu has created a sense of community among people from all walks of life by harnessing the transformative power of the arts and creating a space for conversations between the city and its public, its historical legacies and its aspirations for the future.

Through NayanTara’s vision, the festival has also been able to make art and information accessible to as many people as possible by fostering an environment of direct community interaction. To do this, the festival has always made a conscious effort not to be limited to the walls of galleries and to exhibit artists’ work in public spaces across the city.

Photo Kathmandu not only brings together lens-based artists from around the world in Nepal but also local communities. | Photo: Shikhar Bhattarai

“The visual culture is very much ingrained in the way we exist and respond to the world.  And the festival has become a chance for all of us to pay attention to these visuals and how we are living in this world,” says NayanTara, who is committed to building and expanding a thriving community of visual storytellers. In 2007, she co-founded photo.circle, an independent artist-led platform that facilitates learning, exhibition making, publishing and a variety of other trans-disciplinary collaborative projects for Nepali visual practitioners. In 2011, she co-founded Nepal Picture Library, a digital archiving initiative that works towards diversifying Nepali socio-cultural and political history.

During the time the exhibitions are on display, the city of Patan is abuzz with undeniable energy. Many streets, squares and other communal spaces become exhibition areas where the public is free to come in and interact with the artworks that are exhibited. In addition to the exhibitions, the festival also organises various other public-engaging programs — all of this adding to a sense of community among everyone who participates in the festival.

In an effort to engage and educate the public on different social, political and cultural issues, the photo festival also takes on different themes every year. This year, the festival’s fifth edition, which is scheduled to be held between 25 February and 31 March, is addressing a deep, gnawing issue: our relationship with the natural world.

Every year, Photo Kathmandu has a different theme; in 2018, the festival highlighted issues of gender and sexuality. | Photo: Chemi Dorje Lama

The various Nepali and international artists showcasing visual projects in the festival will question our common understanding of current environmental urgencies, our history with the natural world, and how we view it.

“The theme came about because of the pandemic. I think for many of us, the pandemic brought an unimaginable stopping of time and in many ways, that jolted us to think about the world beyond us. It made us feel like human beings are only a small part of the world; there is a much larger non-human world, which we often overlook,” she said.

NayanTara went on to explain, “Our main hope with the festival too has always been to give space to issues that are not spoken about. And to encourage people to interact with art, and feel a sense of ownership with it. We want people to look at art not as something that is incomprehensible or inaccessible, but as something that brings all of us together, to make meaning as a community”.

Marissa Taylor

Storyteller

Marissa Taylor is an environmental journalist based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Taylor has been working as a journalist since 2013, and has been a part of newsrooms of The Kathmandu Post, The Himalayan Times, and, most recently, The Record Nepal, where she was assistant editor. Although she covers a wide array of environmental topics, she focuses on writing on the intersections of climate change, poverty, inequalities, and public health. She was among the grantees in Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Climate Change Reporting programme in 2020 and in the British Council’s Women Reporters on Climate Change programme in 2021.

    Time to Read:  4 Minutes
    Storyteller: Marissa Taylor
    21 February 2023
    Category:
    Game Changers

    Let Resonate Transport You!

    Travel the world with the Resonate newsletter.

    Highlights include:

    • Interesting stories from people in all corners of the globe
    • Vibrant photos sure to spark wanderlust
    • Ideas on where to go now — and how to do it responsibly
    Meet Mery Calderón, The Coach Helping Connect Visitors to Peruvian Culture

    A Peruvian tourism expert helps local women create new ways to share their culture with visitors.

    Meet the Cherokee National Treasures Preserving Traditional Skills

    Honouring people who have made significant contributions to the preservation of the tribe's art, language, and culture.

    Stories from Nepal

    Navigating the Crossroads: Reconsidering Synthetic Prayer Flags on Everest

    Hung in devotion and intended as a symbol of victory, instead synthetic prayer flags are a cause of pollution, clashing with Buddhist environmental ethics.

    Meet the Kora Cycling Challenge Team, Turning the Wheels of Change

    Perhaps the biggest charity ride in the Himalaya, the Kora Cycling Challenge attracts 4,000+ riders in a single day to locations in Nepal and around the world.

    Celebrating Rice In Nepal and Considering Its Changing Nature

    While the year’s first planting of rice is marked by joyous festivities, the gradual disappearance of native planting traditions provides food for thought.

    Let Resonate Transport You!

    Travel the world with the Resonate newsletter.

    Highlights include:

    • Interesting stories from people in all corners of the globe
    • Vibrant photos sure to spark wanderlust
    • Ideas on where to go now — and how to do it responsibly

    Let Resonate Transport You!

    Travel the world with the Resonate newsletter.

    Highlights include:

    • Interesting stories from people in all corners of the globe
    • Vibrant photos sure to spark wanderlust
    • Ideas on where to go now — and how to do it responsibly