Kalponik Rekha : Silences

Curated by Avita Maheen

Artists: Nirantar Yakthumba, Nishchal Khadka and Mesh

A tear falls,

not from sorrow,

but from the weight of light.

A bird calls out—not for flight,

but for the memory of wings.

Building on their distinct yet interconnected past, Yakthumba, Khadka and Mesh come together and into the intersections of memory, materiality, and human-nature relationships. Nepal born artists Yakthumba's sonic investigations, grounded in geometry, Khadka's curatorial sound art, and Mesh's sensory storytelling of everyday realities and lived experiences in Sikkim, emphasize transdisciplinary sonic landscape in the Himalayan terrain.

Nirantar Yakthumba

Nirantar is a musician and composer from Nepal, based in the Hague, the Netherlands. He is currently a Master's student at the Institute of Sonology, with the help of a scholarship awarded to him by the Konrad Boehmer Foundation. In his work, he investigates the relationships between sound, materiality, force, and geometry, and how people individually and collectively make sense of these relationships through practice. He is the artistic director of the Kali Ensemble and have performed most notably at Studio Loos, the Hague; the Lange Nacht der Neuen Musik, Düsseldorf; the Orgelpark, Amsterdam; Humboldt University, Berlin; and KM28 Berlin; among others.

website

Nishchal Khadka

Nischal Khadka is a sound artist, independent curator, cultural organizer, and a DJ from Nepal. In 2022, he established a nonprofit organization Transhimalaya Foundation for Transdisciplinary Creativity (TFTC) with the aim of making new art accessible to the public in the Himalayan region. He also founded Weird Events in 2016 to promote indie, alternative, and electronic music in Nepal. Nischal has previously worked with Kathmandu Triennale 2077 as a head of multimedia and technology for the festival production. He has also curated a four-part radio episode The Transhimalayan Network in 2022 for SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin. Recently he curated the "A Song of Woes: We Offer Steeps", for SPOR Festival, Aarhus and Ultima Contemporary Music Festival, Oslo.

Mesh

Mesh is an interdisciplinary researcher, writer and storyteller based in Amsterdam. They are curious about themes and questions related to human-nature relations, subjectivities and landscapes through the lens of everyday realities, sensory experiences and personal narratives. Mesh draws great inspiration from their personal lived experiences as a queer individual, participatory (auto)ethnographic research and sensorial stories from their home region of Sikkim, India in the Eastern Himalaya.