By Renuka Dhakal

Kathmandu, Apr. 19: As great renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”

Working by this same spirit, Siddhartha Art Gallery, as one of the pioneering art galleries of the country, has been providing a promotional platform for contemporary art works, helping artists to reach the art lovers and the buyers of art works at home and abroad.

Babarmahal, the historic palace where Siddhartha Art Gallery is located, is in itself a work of art and fine architecture.

Over the past three decades, Siddhartha Art Gallery has showcased more than 500 art exhibitions, providing a venue to artists, musicians and literary writers from all backgrounds to nurture their art and market their works in the process.

But this art gallery may never have come into existence if it were not for Sangeeta Thapa and her pioneering pursuit to introduce Nepal to the rest of the world through contemporary arts.

Thapa, director and curator of the gallery, credits her father for sparking her interest in art early in life. Her father, Himalaya Shumsher Rana, is the first governor of Nepal Rastra Bank. “My father was my first inspiration who planted the seeds of my imagination at an early age. Though he was not an artist, he was an ardent lover and collector of art works and the source of my inspiration,” she said.

After her father left the Nepal Rastra Bank and joined the United Nations, Thapa and her three siblings got a chance to visit various countries accompanying their father on his international assignments. This exposed her to different cultures of different parts of the world and further filled her with curiosity about art’s development, promotion and preservation.

But her true foray into the art came after she returned to Nepal in 1983. She studied Anthropology and Mass Communication in George Mason University, Virginia, USA studied art and design at West Sussex College, UK. She is married to Sunil Bahadur Thapa who served as Minister for Commerce and Supplies. Before getting married, she had been outside the country for 22 years. She was now settled in a new political family as the daughter-in-law of Surya Bahadur Thapa. Though belonging to a political family, it was not politics that was to become her career. There was some other field where she was going to make her mark.

Actually, the political domain of her new family worried her. “I feared I would lose my identity. So, I felt I needed to do something different to standout. I began searching for something where I could establish myself,” Thapa said.

A turning point came in Thapa’s life when one day she happened to visit an exhibition by painter Shashikala Tiwari titled ‘In the Footsteps of Peace’ on Buddha’s lifestyle. “I was enthralled with Tiwari’s works put on exhibition and contacted her. I even bought one of her paintings,” she recalled.

This stimulated her to establish an art gallery, a place for musicians, poets, artists, writers and creative personalities of all sorts to come and exhibit their talents and get national and international acknowledgement for their works. So, in partnership with the source of her inspiration, artist Sashikala Tiwari, Thapa opened the Siddhartha Art Gallery in 1987. She is the director and curator of the gallery.

Initially, the gallery was established at Kantipath, not too far away from the Palpasa Gallery, Srijana Art Gallery, J. Art Gallery and Lalit Kala Campus. “We were hoping to make Kantipath an art hub but the place got too busy and became too noisy for an art gallery. So, we later shifted to Babar Mahal,” Thapa said. 

The early exhibitions at Siddhartha were mostly of abstract and nature but during the Maoist insurgency, the gallery began focusing on ‘art activism,’ showcasing works of people like Ragini Upadhyay, Asmina Ranjit and Sujan Chitrakar with the objective of bringing about change in people’s thinking.

This circle of artists also started the Khulla Dhoka (Open Door) community art project where people who never talked about art before, started talking about the subject as well as created art works.

As a pioneering art curator, Thapa is happy that the perception around purchasing paintings has evolved in the country. “In the past, ambassadors and foreigners used to buy art. But now, many Nepalis are developing a taste in art and they buy paintings of their fascination,” she said.

In 2017, Thapa launched the Kathmandu Triennale, a premier international platform for global contemporary arts. Many artists from within and outside Nepal gather in Kathmandu for the event. This year, the Triennale will be held from October to November where artists from 35 countries are expected to participate.  

Besides art, Thapa is also engaged in philanthropy. She said that the money raised from the gallery goes to the Siddhartha Art Foundation which utilises it in social activities. Every year, through the Australian Himalayan Foundation and the Himalayan Light Foundation, she provides art scholarships and mentorships to students.  

Thapa, who is a board member of Patan Museum, is planning to set up an art repository centre which will help the next generation learn about Nepali contemporary art. The repository plan aims to archive art works, articles, posters and other publications related to art.

For Thapa, art provided a medium to understand and get to know Nepal when she first came here after more than two decades in foreign countries. She believes that art should mirror unexplored and unrecognised spheres. She also believes that Kathmandu is the perfect city for artists to delve into the fragrance of natural beauty and capture it on their canvases.