Earth Body Mind III
Birendra Pratap, 2014
Mixed media on Nepali paper
210 × 152 cm

© Siddhartha Arts Foundation

My work conveys a multiplicity of perspectives depicting people and their environments, natural landscapes and the cityscapes of ancient towns. My paintings and drawings are often populated by primal figures, expressive and distorted, which evoke ancient resonances in contemporary concerns and personal emotions.

I return to the sun the things that science has created – manmade things. The discoveries, technologies, and inventions of humanity testify to acts of creativity, and yet we have been responsible for such destruction. Our perceptions of the world and of each other work in tandem with this dual power of creation and destruction. Religious groups fuel massive dissimilarities in the way in which people perceive the world; it is our inability to see beyond these differences, which invariably lead to war. Consumed by human needs, the environment suffers. And now, the sun’s rays are sending things back to us – the disturbances we have created. We have produced a situation of panic as we try to find another home, another planet, another place to live. At the rate we are going, it looks like we will be in search of a new civilisation.