Image Credit - Shrine Empire
The works of Awdhesh Tamrakar address many of the problems that plague and define our day, including migrations, searches for home, identity, and belonging; untold stories, silent histories, and especially those of illiterate, oppressed populations. His works are evidence of the reality that a profoundly individualised and insightful visual practice may emerge from a free, courageous, and prolonged interaction with elements, processes, equipment, ideas, and community.
Broken, battered, and hammered copper vessels, large panels of sculpted pulp (hand-moulded from paper boards), crumpled photographs of vacant buildings and vacated landscapes (reinforced on fibreglass plates), brass powder (collected from typical iron-smithy karkhanas and studios), and brass powder all compete for space and attention on walls, floors, and pedestals.
Tamrakar had formal training in a visual language of the colonial and post-colonial periods but now aspires to connect the dots between overheard conversations in familial contexts of abandoned homes and past migrations.