When grief speaks through art

Grief, though heavy, can often be an artist’s muse. It can serve as a source of creative energy or the subject of their work. I felt this when I stepped inside Siddhartha Art Gallery to observe the ongoing exhibition ‘What Once Was’. Artists Sabita Gyawali and Katyani Rai’s debut exhibition deals with emotion, memory, grief and loss.

Their artworks present emotions that mere words fail to capture. As Mathiole, a designer/illustrator, says, “Art speaks where words are unable to explain.” Observing their creations, it seems that when words were inadequate, art provided a means for them to voice what had long been hidden in silence.

‘Where Will You Go If The Stars Won’t Align, Towards The Field Of Flowers I Call It Mine’, no, this is not a verse of a poem but the title of Rai’s artwork that welcomed me to the gallery. This artwork has a girl holding a crow. The girl’s gaze is distant, and her hand is adorned with the tracery of flower-printed curtains, which blurs the boundary between body and nature.

One can interpret the artwork as a coexistence of humans and nature. But Rai said, “Crows circle around my home. While commonly viewed as omens, my mother never chased them off.”

Listening to her, I sensed that the artwork held significant meaning for her. As I delved deeper into her creations, my intuition was confirmed. It depicted not just the external facade of objects, but her inner self.

“The title whispers of a place beyond fate’s alignment, where the stars refuse to map a course. Yet, in that uncertainty, there is still a field of flowers—sanctuary woven from longing, a space one can claim as their own,” she added.

Another etching by Rai entitled ‘3:03’ piques attention. It appears straightforward, featuring an image of a window with moths fluttering outside. However, this simplicity prompts one to ponder the layers of meaning concealed within. For Rai, she finds strange stillness that comes in the early hours. The title ‘3:03’ could symbolise a state of transition or being ‘in-between’ two stages—morning and night. It is the moment suspended between yesterday and tomorrow, between wakefulness and sleep. The window symbolises both a barrier and an invitation to the moth outside.

Spectators can see lots of moths in her artwork. As moths, contradictory to butterflies, represent endings, death, and even the mystery of the night, evoking a darker theme. The fallacy of the light usually represses this theme.

In ‘Heaven Hangs Heavy’, a woman trapped in a dark, isolated space gazes up at moths, fluttering around a window where light streams in. In my view, it suggests embracing moments of darkness and solitude. After all, without experiencing darkness and isolation, how can we value the light at the end of the tunnel? How can we cherish companionship without first undergoing a brief spell of loneliness?

‘The Softest Things Still Breaks’ is another moving piece by Rai. It depicts a flower on the brink of being plucked, only to be stepped on and ultimately torn in half. The flower symbolises human emotions. Its wilting illustrates our tendency to suppress feelings while tearing them apart, highlighting the delicate nature of people and their emotions. In describing the artwork, Rai expressed, “It is normal to be soft, and it’s okay to break down sometimes.”

On the other hand, Gyawali’s works strive to capture memories as they begin to fade. Following her grandfather’s death, she found it challenging to cope with her loss. She felt overwhelmed by emotions but struggled to find an outlet for them.

Art became her salvation. Each of Gyawali’s 28 artworks is linked to her grandfather’s memories.

“I had a close bond with my grandfather, confiding in him often. His death left me with no one to share my thoughts,” Gyawali reflected. ‘The Letter You Left Unread I’ and ‘The Letter You Left Unread II’ feature painted envelopes. These letters represent the unspoken words that never reached her grandfather after his passing.

In ‘Traces of You in the Wind’, Gyawali uses paper layering on paper creatively. When I first gazed at it, I saw a woman putting her head out of the window with her hair down as the wind blew. The layering of paper could represent the layering of memories. This artwork captures how, after losing someone close, we feel them in everything—in the wind, nature, shadow and so forth. We try to find metaphors for them everywhere—in the moon and the stars, in the books we read and in the art we paint. But catching a glimpse of them or being with them feels like a metaphor. An extended metaphor. No matter how much we reminisce about them, it can never be real.

Another striking work of Gyawali is ‘Window to Yesterday I’, wherein she captures the essence of memory and loss. In this piece, she burns pressing paper with incense to form the image of a window’s rod. The burns evoke the slow, inevitable rusting of metal, a metaphor for time’s passage and the fading remnants of the past.

Gyawali’s ‘I’m Still Here’ shines brightly within her artistic portfolio. This landscape painting, depicting a meadow, a tree, and the sun, exudes a warmth that differs from the more sombre themes of her other pieces. While her other works often evoke feelings of melancholy, this one unexpectedly brought me joy. This could be attributed to the prevalent green hues, a colour that represents life, renewal, and nature at its peak.

When I inquired about the painting’s significance, Gyawali shared a heartfelt memory, “On my way to mamaghar, there is a mango tree that I feel deeply connected to because my grandfather used to take me there.” Her remarks changed how I viewed the artwork. I started to see the lively green representing the energy and warmth she felt when her grandfather was still around.

Gyawali’s works remind spectators of the transient nature of life and the way memories, though intangible, continue to shape our present.

All in all, the artworks of both Rai and Gyawali are deeply personal. They are woven from the fabric of their own experiences and emotions. Yet, in their expressions, they create something profoundly universal. We do not just see their artworks but feel them, too.

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What Once Was

Where: Siddhartha Art Gallery, Babermahal Revisited, Kathmandu

When: March 14 to April 4

Time: Sunday to Friday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturday 12 noon to 5:00 pm

Entry: Free