Paradise Lost II
Asha Dangol, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
122 x 91cm

© Asha Dangol

In this painting I cast off the crutch of avatars and deities and myself take centre stage. Paradise Lost, along with Where Am I and Where is my City are splendid examples of self-portraiture in which I explore the many issues that preoccupy me. As an avatar flying across barren wastes beaten by trucks, or when floating despondently over the reality of Kathmandu’s indiscriminately modernized cultural spaces, or when looming, Godzilla-like, across a horizon of skyscrapers located in old Kathmandu as it is trampled by tuk-tuks, cars and trucks, I transformed myself into the face of the common man, the hapless witness to the slow erosion of the earth and of civilization following human greed and violence. Over-population and deforestation cause suffering and suffocation. By way of a richly coded visual narrative pointing to the lost heritage of the Kathmandu Valley, the series Paradise Lost is my cultural commentary on globalization.