While painting exhibitions are a dime and a dozen in Kathmandu, there is one unique perspective on sculpture that opens on 19 August at The Siddhartha Art Gallery.

'Lyrics from the Junkyard' is an amalgam of primitive art form and contemporary sculpture by Meena Kayastha that will take visitors' breath way with its sheer audacity and dreamlike forms.

Kayastha has grafted life-forms from the junkyard with imaginative figures and native earth tones. Not only do you see haunting anthropomorphic figures lurking within each piece, you also hear the music that the mechanical sculptures sing.

Kayastha says she began fiddling with the idea of moulding pieces from scrap heaps five years ago, the idea incubated in her sculptor's mind until the actual work started taking shape two years ago. Paintings appealed less to her at art school, and she was drawn more to sculptures recycled from objects which had outlived their usefulness to society. The 25 pieces, are worked on progressively without a preconceived promise to enchant viewers.

Meena uses paper mache, mud, discarded junk pieces, her own jewelry and even human teeth in her sculptures that are toned with primitive and traditional hues of tera sigillata, mud brown, whites and smoke black. The structures have been welded, modified and reminds one of African art forms, or the exaggerated figures of Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp. Kayastha's boldly dada-esque approach distinguishes them and give them a breathtaking originality in the evolution of modern Nepali sculpture.

Having participated in a number of group exhibitions, this is Kayastha's first solo. "I see process work as more intriguing than the conceptual one, process work lets you discover while you work and feelings are added to it in those moments," she explains. "A life form shapes itself progressively, and that is what I have tried with these pieces …I have added life to it." True, a preview of the exhibits evoked a sense of awe and wonder at how Kayastha has made inanimate junk animate.

Lyrics from the Junkyard
By Meena Kayastha
19 August -9 September
The Siddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal Revisited
www.siddharthaartgallery.com

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