The Time Series is a reflection about the absolute power of Time. The irreversible ticking of the clock is unbeatable. Powerful people of the present and the past had to learn that rule too.
An other copy is available on YouTube
You may also visit the Picasa Gallery :
http://picasaweb.google.com/ragini.grela/TimeSeries
and http://ragini-art.com
Friday, March 7, 2008
People Power 2006 a new slideshow
The compilation of prints is inspired by the popular uprising in Kathmandu during April 2006. It overturned the one man rule imposed by King Gyanendra and restored the parliament prerogatives
An extra copy of the slideshow is available on YouTube
You may also have a look at the Picasa Gallery : http://picasaweb.google.com/ragini.grela/PeoplePower2006
and visit http://ragini-art.com
Saturday, February 9, 2008
New dowload for "Let them bark" documentary
I am extremely honored that Emma Cott and Adrianne Koteen have produced a 10 minutes documentary about my work. It was done during the early winter of 2006 and is entitled "Let them bark".It is quite good and you can download it.
For those with patience or a good bandwidth, there is a mp4 version (42 Mb) at the following URL : http://www.adrive.com/public/22130262f942f3a4bb0a0e0f39e06f8d4cd9bfe01e0103442298433150a91165.html
You should also visit the presentation of the movie on Emma and Adrienne documentary page. You will find there a button to view the streamlined movie.
Enjoy.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Art for Martyrs' Sake
This is a nice article written about the "People Power 1990-2006" exhibit.Click here to download the full article
Thursday, December 6, 2007
People Power in Schorndorf - Germany
VERNISSAGE –
Ragini Upadhdaya - Grela / People Power
30. November 2007 | 20.30 Uhr
Grußwort des Oberbürgermeisters von Schorndorf, Herrn Matthias Klopfer
Einführende Worte von Sabine Reichle-Nolle
Es sind vor allem drei Bereiche, zu denen die bekannte nepalische Künstlerin arbeitet: Die Kraft des Weiblichen, die Beschwörung des Friedens und der politische Machtkampf.
Letzterer ist ihr Thema in den Materialdrucken dieser Ausstellung. Die Arbeiten entstanden angesichts der bis heute dauernden Auseinandersetzung zwischen dem ungeliebten König, den traditionellen politischen Parteien und den allgegenwärtigen Maoisten in Nepal.
Aber nicht die politischen Programme interessieren die Künstlerin, sondern die Psychologie der politischen Akteure. Ihren Ehrgeiz, ihr Streben nach Macht stellt sie – manchmal fast karikierend – dar.
Während ihre Formsprache stark von der europäischen Malerei beeinflusst ist (Ragini studierte Kunst u.a. in Stuttgart) greift ihre Symbolik die alten Mythen ihrer Heimat auf: z.B. wenn Ravana, der 10-köpfige Dämon, für den Politiker steht, dessen wahres Gesicht man nie kennt, oder der Stier für das nepalische Volk, das zwar lange braucht, bis es sich in Bewegung setzt, dann aber kaum aufzuhalten ist.
More about Ragini on : www.ragini-art.com
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Schorndorf exhibition is open
Club Manufaktur in Schorndorf hosts the "People Power" series until the 15/12/2007
The mayor of the city of Schorndorf , Mr. Matthias Klopfer has inaugurated the exhibition and was presented a Nepali topi.
An other prominent guest was the Director of Kulture house, Schorndorf , Ms . Sabine Reichle – Nolle .
Both speakers have presented the artist and the work exhibited
with details and an elaborate understanding of the Nepalese context. This proves how much art and artists act as a bridge between culture and countries.A recent video documentary about Ragini's work has also been displayed during the inauguration ceremony. The video entitle "Let them bark" highlight the social and cultural depth of the artist's message.
The "People Power" series is a tribute to the popular uprising which restored democratic rule in Nepal in April 2006 often referred as the Andolan 2.
The "People Power " series is available on the Picasa Gallery, just clik here
The video documentary is available on : http://www.ironweedfilms.com/films/letthembark
More background information is available on : www.ragini-art.com
Monday, December 3, 2007
My exhibition in Edinburgh has closed
My group show with
Nan Mulder, Gea Karhof,and Seema Sharma Shah
at Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh
The exhibition started on 10th of November 2007. It is a great success with many works sold.
The show is named : Double Vision
It runs from 10th to 28th November 2007
Some more photos are available on my Picasa Gallery just click here
The Open Eye Gallery has a small page with my work, click here to see it but I exhibit more works as show on my gallery RaginiForScotland2007
The second show is in Schorndorf, near Stuttgart, in Germany from the 30th of November to the 14th of December.
The venue is called the Manufaktur and their web site is :
http://www.club-manufaktur.de/
I am very thrilled to meet new people in Scotland and hope to enjoy the reunion with many old friends in Germany.
There is more information about my acquaintance with Germany on my web site in my "German story" pages.
Click here for the "People's Power" gallery.
Some articles about my exhibitions are published in the Kathmandu Post
Ragini
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Exhibition in Europe November & December 2007
It will start with a group show with
Nan Mulder, Gea Karhof,and Seema Sharma Shah
at Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh
the show is named : Double Vision, it runs from 10th to 28th November 2007
The Open Eye Gallery has a small page with my work, click here to see it but I plan to exhibit more works as show on my gallery RaginiForScotland2007
The second show is in Schorndorf, near Stuttgart, in Germany from the 30th of November to the 14th of December.
The venue is called the Manufaktur and their web site is :
http://www.club-manufaktur.de/
I am very thrilled to meet new people in Scotland and hope to enjoy the reunion with many old friends in Germany.
There is more information about my acquaintance with Germany on my web site in my "German story" pages.
Click here the "People's Power" gallery.
Ragini
People's Power 1990-2006
For a man fully uneducated in any of the art forms, I had the good fortune of coming across Ragini Upadhyay Grela some ten years ago. In fact, I had sought her out – for a special reason. Tired of speaking to and hearing one another in various regional seminars and dialogues, some of us in the “South Asian civil society” thought of the possibility and the value of bringing together a special group of people to see how creative imagination addresses the social themes engaging our minds at the time. Accordingly, in
Through her series of paintings including Samaya Chakra Raginiji has shown how her journey in “arts for life’s sake” continues merrily. Happily for all of us, she did not shy away from making her presence felt also in the street as we campaigned peacefully for Loktantra. In the current series of her paintings, she has now ably captured for us the soul and the might of the people’s power that is transforming Nepali politics and society for good. That she has decided to donate a substantial part of the sale proceeds to the families of the martyrs in
Devendra Raj Panday
Citizens’ Movement for Democracy and Peace
Click here to see the pictures of "People's Power 1990-2006"
The exhibition was very succesful and was opened by Dpty Prime Minister K.P. Oli, click here for the picture
NEW! Let Them Bark: A Portrait of the Artist Ragini (10 min)
I am extremely honored that Emma Cott and Adrianne Koteen have produced a 10 minutes documentary about my work. It was done during the early winter of 2006 and is entitled "Let them bark".
It is quite good and you can click here to download it (22 MB) It is a Flash Video file (flv) so you need an adequate player. ( to get one you may visit http://applian.com/flvplayer/)
For those with patience or a good bandwidth, there is a mp4 version (42 Mb) at the following URL : http://www.adrive.com/public/22130262f942f3a4bb0a0e0f39e06f8d4cd9bfe01e0103442298433150a91165.html
You should also visit the presentation of the movie on Emma and Adrienne documentary page. You will find there a button to view the streamlined movie.
My fully structured web site is http://ragini-art.com and a lot of my works are displayed on http://picasaweb.google.com/ragini.grela
Politics of Wheel by Abhi Subedi
Abhi Subedi has always written the most elaborate and profound review of my exhibitions. With "Politics of Wheel" he again succeed to express in words the message I try to elaborate in my images. The Time Series pictures are on :
http://picasaweb.google.com/ragini.grela/TimeSeries
His article was originally published in the Kathmandu Post (2005-05-18)
| Politics of wheel | ||
| By ABHI SUBEDI
- The walls of Sangita Thapa's Siddhartha Art Gallery at Babarmahal Revisited have become vertical stage to me. Over the year I have watched the Nepali times, the somersaults of this nation's history staged on these non-descript walls. After the drama of Nepali violent history presented almost in a neo-realist style by Durga Baral last winter on these walls, a series of drawings, etching and mixed media works executed by artist Ragini Upadhyaya Grela titled "Time Wheel" representing political times are on display at the moment. Siddhartha gallery has become a next Gurukul where the drama of politics and the spectres created by Nepali power games are staged time and again. Incidentally, Ragini's exhibition was opened with the performance of a short silent play about time by the Gurukul artists. Saugat Malla's powerful body theatre presented the drama of time that surges ahead leaving those who can or can not grab it behind. An overtly political drama if it is hung on the walls of the gallery of art becomes a cliché, evoking banality and creating déjà vu effect. Conspicuous walls in the metropolitan areas become the stage especially when the times in the national history become turbulent. Demonstrators, political activists, rebels and propagandists use the walls to stage their different versions of drama in the forms of posters, wall scribbles, drawings and sometimes just colours. But the walls of a regular art gallery hang more structured images and icons of political history. Ragini's drawings and intaglio works have brought new power and new condition of watching the subtleties of Nepali politics on the wall-stage of Siddhartha gallery at the moment. At this exhibition of the works, great number of which are already sold out, the artist Ragini Upadhyaya Grela wearing long vertical tika of a serious yogin on her forehead escorts the visitors giving eloquent speech about the themes of her works. I try my best to avoid her interpretation and concentrate on her works because there is a great gap and a necessary one between her theorising which sounds sometimes banal, and her strong and charming works that hang on both the upper and lower floors of Siddhartha. Ragini theorises that time is evanescent; those people who were there in the past are no longer there today and we too will go away one day. These places will continue to exist and we will not be there. Time is mightier than all of us. That is her linear theory about time. An artist does not have to be a Bergeson, a Nietzsche, a Balakrishna Sama or a Michel Foucault to talk about the intricacies of the times. The artist has her/his way of looking into the philosophical questions. The most important trajectory that an artist follows to get into a philosophical world is created through mythology. But what an artist does through the medium of her works is beyond the capacity of many philosophers. Ragini combines politics, myth and love in each of her works. The images of Nepali politics from Damodar Pande to Sher Bahadur Deuba on the people's front and the Shah monarchs on the royal front become part of Ragini's historical philosophy as conjured through a system of mythology, and her works are strong and striking. The concept of wheel in this exhibition is remarkably original. The wheel of time or the politics of wheel is the main metaphor. Ragini's drawings and collage works create a circular concept of time. The clock-like circularity is created by the collage of Nepali power wielders' photographs--from the monarchs of the Shah dynasty to the prime ministers that ends with Deuba in the circle. Ragini's vision of the wheel is mytho-poetic. She finds the historical times as constructed history. Time without politics and persona is amorphous for her. But time measured with the people who have held power and created the Nepali times runs the risk of representing times that are not seen from the eyes of the common people. An artist's responsibility is to open the possibility of viewing the times from fresh perspectives. To see time from the positions and durations spanned by the rule of the powerful persons is to create a politics of wheel power. Many power players have created such images of history. Now we have a tendency to deconstruct the concept of controlled times. But the power of Ragini's works lies in the very quality of the works. She is the best intaglio artist in Nepal who creates very subtle effects in her works. The minute details are taken care of. She paints and touches the etchings with love, life and colour. The drawings, etching and mixed media works on display at Sidhartha precisely show that. These works lure the viewers into the world of history, politics and myth by using the metaphor "wheel of time" which is the charming recreation of the myth that combines dreams with the sense of finality. But the love of life and continuity becomes stronger in these works because of the artist's subtle treatment of subject through the use of lines, colours and figurality. |
Wayne Amtzis poems
Wayne is an old friend who has been inspired to write some poems based on my work (unfortunately for my ego he writes about other artists too.)
His web site is :
http://www.photo-poems.com/index.html
EMBODYING MYTH
A human mask: a peacock-tailed cow gazes at us
Shank-ed and torso-ed within, a peacock-effaced woman dances;
Bird of dreams hoisted on her shoulder and outreaching arm
A key around the cow's neck, a lotus for teats
and a hand, like those that smear the space behind her,
stamped on the cow's hind leg
Heavy, stable, secure
implacable presence, not a cow
or a lion, but cow
-mother, lion
-mother, that will not
abandon her progeny--though torn from her
they be scattered over the earth
Hands on her body and dwelling place,
signs of the forces she submits to, the violence willed against her
Peaceful, yet indomitable
There's no moving these mythic beings
from their rightful place at the center of creation
To become one with the cow mother,
the peacock dreamer, the woman dancing, the lotus nurturing,
take the key from the cow's neck,
and remove your handprints from her thigh
Soon…soon… For…
Familial and haunting, magnetic and morph-like,
this unaccountable creative force,
these emblems of forbearance, signs for what outlasts
and precedes us,
Ragini's menagerie,
so familiar and unfamiliar,
from another world, are revelatory glimpses of the world we inhabit
or (like Pig with topi and shoe)
explicit condemnation of those who can no longer
dissemble that world
RAGINI'S MENAGERIE
and distant city; beneath your shadow,
a man and woman, a river flowing
Snake-tailed monkeys dance,
rubbing bodies, rubbing lips, the city in their hands
How is it these beasts, feigning innocence, defy gravity,
never falling from the world they trample?
Flame-footed, beak-footed, lotus-footed, stair-footed
female-faced lion, the sun balanced on your snout, your tail aflame,
your many lucky numbers secreted within
Legs shackled, turning inward and away,
your bird-beaked and winged-women, keys in hand,
gather force
--horse--
that will not be tamed
Big-bellied pig, your sock & shoe-fitted foot
strutting sure, how happily you balance and sniff that worm gnawed apple
So full of shit, flowers and weeds root on your back
Your topi seems out of place. So small a cap for one so large in girth
and single-minded in greed
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