Nepali Pasal (The Nepali Shop)
Nepali Pasal (The Nepali Shop) is community art idea associated with market culture of Nepal. We bring community to produce the products for us which can be anything that is artistic, skillful based works from woolen shawls, ceramic products, Mithila arts, Mask, handmade paper products, kids crafts, fun ideas, art works of the artists etc. Talking about market culture of Nepal as well as Asia, as we see shop there are so many products hanging on the doors displayed on very randomly and with varieties of products to enhance customers to buy. When customers come they come with the intension to buy the goods in cheaper rate and whereas the shopkeeper tries to sell it in higher rate. As such they don’t have fixed price. They keep the price to negotiate. After a long negotiation shopkeeper come to the marginal line to sell the goods. At the end both the party feels happy. This is how price are fixed here. For me as an artist I find it more interactive, performative and more spontaneous. In other hand especially in Nepal, they produce goods in the back of the workshop and sell it in front of the shop. Most of the local products are sold in very customize manner. We are enhancing community goods produce by locals specially produce by underprivileged woman. I plan to have the space to enhance MAKE YOUR OWN STUFFS as a workshop. On one interesting part of Nepali pasal to create the participant (kids, teenager and adults) more involving, interactive by producing own goods for oneself in the workshop they can paint own t-shirt, create own greeting cards etc. They create fun activities with coloring, drawing, and pasting. The project will bring participants more close, it makes them interactive and share fun things creating together. They create their own stuffs in the workshop and take back home to gift it to love ones. They can also buy products that we showcase in negotiable way. All these activities will bring smile back to life it is more like healing. There will also be spontaneous sound healing performance and demonstration for the participants. This is what I am very much intended to do during our Kula-Bazaar show in Asia Culture institute. We will showcase the products and sell them in negotiation.
Concept of Nepali pasal is to bring smile back to life and make people feel good with its norms and value. Whole project will be interactive, fun and performative like the markets in Asia. Since Smile is still so blur in our daily life, we seek the healing norms. As we look the world in present we hear, see and watch humanitarian crisis everywhere like in Syria, Palestine, Africa, South Aisa etc which is happening by the greed of power, it is such a human made crisis. But I look back to my own native situation which is so close to me. Natural disaster is creating such a havoc like the human made war. As an artist from Nepal this concept reflects the situation of the remote mountainous villages after the earthquake of 25th April 2015 and 12th May 2015. Still the situation is very sad and miserable in the remote areas of Nepal. People are still living under the tin roof and Children are still learning in the broken schools. But our government is busy with their political agenda and their work in progress is in a turtle speed. The work is to clear about the situation of Nepal to global platform. Just to give psychological support to the children in need in such remote affected areas of Nepal I started GET WELL SOON project as community art project to conduct art healing workshop.
The proceed from the sale of Nepali Pasal will go to the children affected by the earthquake in remote village of Nepal. The proceed will help in their education and enhance Stress Free Education System in the public schools. Further vision is to reach more children in need, we have taken the target to meet 10000 children within next year. We also train teacher to enhance art education in remote area by conducting training workshops, we plan to organize various other programs to include wider community of people in our project. We will be continuing our Art with healing workshops to boost up emotional bonding within self, mainly focusing on children. Furthermore we are determine to enroll Art and skilled based activities in public or government school of such remote villages. In doing so, our aim will be to reach out to as many children as possible. We plan to establish community culture center with facility of community library where community people have access to utilize the resource. Through the project we can able to involve many community people in eco-friendly art and craft activities. Teaching children and women with such methodology will develop their craftsmanship and enhance their economic status as well. We also believe in collaboration with different partners bringing awareness on other areas such as health, sanitation, nutrition and self-sustainability of the community.
We all are aware that even the Gods were the victims during the brutal Earthquake. Get Well Soon is putting the best efforts to rebuild and restore our Art, Culture and Heritage. We are also initiating scholarship for needy children, Art Grants for individual artists and Curators of Nepal in near future.
For more details feel free to visit our facebook page for our project: https://www.facebook.com/GETWELLSOONprojectishealingNepal/
Manish Lal Shrestha 2016
manish lal shrestha 