Welcome to Samvaad, where art meets conversation, and inspiration knows no bounds. Here we engage in insightful conversations with eminent personalities from the art fraternity. Through Samvaad, Abir Pothi aims to create a platform for thought-provoking discussions, providing readers with an exclusive glimpse into the creative processes, inspirations, and experiences of these creative individuals. From curating groundbreaking exhibitions to pushing the boundaries of artistic expression, our interviews shed light on the diverse perspectives and contributions of these art luminaries. Samvaad is your ticket to connect with the visionaries who breathe life into the art world, offering unique insights and behind-the-scenes glimpses into their fascinating journeys.
This Samvaad is between Nidheesh Tyagi from Abir and Surabhi Chaudhary who is the Director of the Chaudhary Foundation. It has an initiative called Unnati, catering towards the sustainable development of traditional livelihood programs and women empowerment. Unnati’s philosophy of revival and survival of national heritage, through forms of crafts, dance, music, foods, language, habitat and essentially encompasses the philosophy of life by which civilisations once thrived in culture and traditions.
Nidheesh: Hello and very welcome to “Abir Pothi,” a special edition of Samvaad. My name is Nidheesh Tyagi, and I work as an editor at Abir Pothi. Today, we have a very special guest this time from Nepal, Surabhi Chaudhary ji, and she is the director of Chaudhary Foundation. Chaudhary Foundation runs an incredible initiative called “Unnati,” which is dedicated to the sustainable development of traditional livelihood programs and women’s empowerment. The philosophy behind Unnati revolves around the revival and preservation of national heritage through various art forms such as crafts, dance, music, food, language, habitat and essentially encompasses the philosophy of life by which civilisation once thrived culturally and traditionally. They remain relevant and kind of have a future. Surabhi ji is heavily invested into Art and promoting artists not only from Nepal but also from India. I know some artists who have been associated with Unnati and have worked. So, You are the founder and director of this project, why don’t you tell us more about it.
Surabhi: Thank you so much, Nidheesh ji, and thank you to Abir for giving us this opportunity to share about Chaudhary Foundation and Unnati’s work. So, Unnati was founded as a livelihood program for women, and their entire financial empowerment. It is very organically grown as the program and the project evolve, we felt the need to encompass all kinds of trditional and artistic industries that are very much relevant in the rural and urban spaces and form an integral part of livelihoods and ecosystems. So while this is a program that is driven primarily to economically Empower women and their various Livelihood practices.
It also is designed around preservation and promotion of national and cultural heritage. Heritage and culture forms a very integral part of our life. It’s a way of living actually, it identifies our identity and our being and due to fast urbanisation and modernisation a lot of cultural and traditional practices are now being forgotten and are not, unfortunately relevant today as they once were. So through the Unnati platform while we do a lot of artistic and creative projects, we also find ways in which these projects can be synergised with the artistic communities to preserve our Heritage and our traditional knowledge systems. So we combine both the factors and we work very closely with that.
We’ve started out in Nepal, we are the first Cultural Center that’s doing work like this. It’s multi disciplinary, we run across Foods language habitat, Arts, culture, dance, music, crafts. Various traditional livelihoods are engaged in. So apart from giving this platform for the creative and artistic ecosystem in Nepal we are also reaching out to the whole of South Asia and we’re doing a lot of work and a lot of creative collaborations with the neighbors of South Asia.
Nidheesh: So if I were to meet you anywhere outside Nepal, lets say for a coffee in Delhi or elsewhere, and if I ask you to describe the current and contemporary art in Nepal, what would you say?
Surabhi: So, the contemporary art scene is actually extremely interesting because today the world moved from traditional art to contemporary art, but I feel what is really unique about nepal is that we have really retained our ethnicity and traditional style of working, while making it very modern and contemporary to suit today’s requirement and work ethics, without really losing the traditional identity and touch of it. So, if you really see contemporary art of Nepal, its very much influenced and inspired by traditional architecture and art forms, usage of colours, design, motifs, patterns, ideologies, mythologies, ethnicities. But its interpretation is extremely contemporary.
While taking on a very contemporary form and retaining its ethnicity and its traditional style. So there are a lot of young artists also, say, for example, if you really want to look at contemporary art of Nepal, there are fantastic printmakers here who are doing extremely interesting screen and interesting forms of printmaking.And they are using very contemporary versions of traditional designs and making it a very interesting mix of the modern and the traditional. And then there are folk artists who have taken on a very contemporary form of folk art of Nepal and they’ve really contemporaries it, whether it’s our Mithila art or whether it’s the Tharu art or the traditional arts.
Most recently, you will find our thanka artist over here who was a very traditional thanka artist, who’s now been showcased at the Venice Biennale, which is a contemporary and Nepal had her first pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and it was extremely successfully received.And this traditional thanka artist has taken on a very modern take on tanka art and Buddhist paintings and contemporaries it. We showcased in the Biennale.
Nidheesh:But could you please also name that artist and the journey of that artist and how all of this happened and how Unnati was part of it?
Surabhi: So, Tsherin Sherpa is the name of the artist. We are not directly involved with Tsherin’s works he’s tied up with a gallery in New York and Rossi Rossi from Hong Kong and they are the ones who have represented him on an international platform. But to give you an example of what the contemporary art scene of Nepal has, what shape it has taken, that’s an example that I have shared.And many such artists like Ang Tsherin have participated in various other biennales across the world in a lot of interesting art shows and exhibitions.And currently Unnati has collaborated with many such young and upcoming contemporary artists and we plan to showcase their works in some of the programs that we are planning in the future.
Nidheesh: You have some kind of collaborative arrangements with Raza foundation and art think South Asia. How is it shaping up and where’d you think it’s going to go?
Surabhi: Yes.So we’ve actually tied up with one of our partners.We’ve done various residencies and workshops with them.So our platform of Unnati is actually a space. I would like to just highlight a few things about it is that one it’s a platform for artistic expression but it’s also a learning centre. It’s a cultural centre where we have a lot of cross collaborations, projects, residencies. We have an art gallery where we have shows, we do festivals, we participate in a lot of uh festivals that happen outside of Nepal to take the Nepali art on an international platform to show it to newer audiences. We bring in a lot of like-minded institutions to come and harness the creative ecosystem of Nepal as well. So all these collaborations are in effort to educate and promote essentially, so when we tied up with the Raza foundation and with atsa and with Coach it was with the intention of enriching the presidency spaces and to do collaborative projects with the Nepali and Indian art ecosystem.
The second was for a training program that we did in the art management space so while we are preparing artists for a more enriching artistic expression and enriching their style and their working ethos, we are also doing a lot of work to help them become better managers of their own practice. So Arts management is what we did with Khoj and Atsa and a lot of young gallerists, curators, artists, photographers, writers and journalists attended that Workshop.
It was extremely critical even for art critics because art critique is a space which is still at a very nascent stage in Nepal. So to really uh harness or these various skills that are extremely important in supporting the art ecosystem and to make people better managers in the space we had this program and it’s for the young, the Contemporary and the emerging artists.So we have many such programs that are programmed in our calendar throughout the year and we are very young it’s been only two years since we’ve launched ourselves but we’ve done many such initiatives.
Nidheesh: So does it like it’s only between India collaborative or are you also looking towards say China because it’s culturally you say it’s in the center of both strong civilizations and their influences. So is there something are you doing anything with for the Chinese side as well or is all India?
Surabhi:It’s not all India, like I said we are very much looking at collaborations within the global South. We’ve already started collaborating with the Committee of the dhakaat summit and we represented ourselves at the Das that happened this year. we’ve We’ve already collaborated with AUD and urban Island in Sri Lanka.
We’re doing a lot of Works in India, we participated in Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa about three years ago where we sponsored Nepalese artists to Showcase their works there. We were part of coaching Museum Bienalle. We’ve done the art residencies with the Raza Foundation, Arts management with Khoj and Atsa.So we are looking at collaborations now with Pakistan, we are very much looking at a very enriching, engaging platform for the global South to really come together and work together. We’ve also been recent appointed as cultural ambassadors to Asia Society from Nepal.
So we’ve started, in our small humble way, started reaching out and having meaningful crossovers with our neighbors in the global South and yes we are also very much open to having more engagement with the Far East and the southeast as well. China comes in the Southeast site and because Nepal as you rightly said is nestled between both the big countries of India and China we are also looking at having crossovers with the southeast Neighbours.
Nidheesh: Abir is also very focused about to promote and spotting and nurture Young Artists in in India.What is your template training you were talking about? How do you go about it?
Surabhi: Yes so that’s a very good question. So whenever we are really designing our Pro programs, we also do a very strong needs assessment, based on the needs and the requirements, within the market space, within the education space, within the artist requirements. We do a lot of samvaad and we do a lot of introspection and based on the introspection and conversations that we have internally and externally with various stakeholders, we really design programs that would have long-term and meaningful impact. And for the audiences and participants in these programs also we do a lot of introspection and study and every time we look for new engagement in audiences. So say if we are doing something in the management space it would be more with universities and with students from the urban spaces because they are the ones who would be good managers in the long term, who would give support to this ecosystem. But when we are looking at artist residency for craft and art at that time we look at Artisans and artists and they could be from the rural as well as from the urban spaces. So it just depends on the program and the program design that we are introducing and based on that the audiences are selected.
Nidheesh: This is about your residency programs or this is general?
Surabhi: This is more driven towards the education and harnessing. So yes the residencies. But when we do festivals and events at institutions they all participate in it.
Nidheesh: And how when you integrate all these like not just in India but Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Pakistan which is wonderful. So how does this whole if you say the south Asia Village, it’s almost like getting into South Asia Village kind of a thing, which otherwise it’s like slightly difficult to envisaged in these times. So how do you work around all these? If you can call them the differences and similarities which both are like a Stark in fact. There are so many similarities between Nepal and India and so you know if you can talk about that. I think to my mind it’s a very interesting kind of an issue that how we see those.
Surabhi: Yes so that’s also very interesting that you’ve called Unity cultural Village, the south Asia Village and that is really actually an aspiration that we have is to bring various stakeholders from the global South together on a common platform to really engage and synergise with each other. Not just creatively but it’s also a soft power of relations and cultures between our neighbours and our countries.
The inspiration for this came about because our journey within ourselves would have really been very incomplete if we had not extended ourselves to the global South because essentially our DNA, our history, our region, our civilisation has not only memory but a very strong connect. So if you really look at our social fabric our cultures, our languages, our practices, our beliefs, the way cultures are designed, they are not very different from each other. They are all very similar, we work with similar topography, regions, languages, belief systems, Foods, festivals. We have more similarities than we actually have differences.The differences have only been formed in the very recent 20th century before this the civilisational memory goes back to thousands of years.
So when you actually connect with your neighbours on a cultural platform which is not political or geopolitical or socially political, it’s actually a very enriching connect and it’s only through the Arts that this connect can actually happen can be fostered. It has evolved together over a long period of time through a lot of civilisational history. So say for example we are looking at doing a tapestry or a pottery residency where we would be having artists from all over South Asia coming and really working together on say something as simple as the Ikat or jamdani or the Dhaka. But these forms were neither originated in Bangladesh or in Nepal or in India or in Afghanistan, it actually took place from the Mesopotamian times which traveled to Afghanistan which traveled to Pakistan which traveled to India to Nepal and to Bangladesh.
They all took their own forms so you can’t really say that any one craft or art belongs to any one country in isolation it’s all a germination from our history from our civilisation so it’s very important to go back to these roots and to rediscover these techniques and practices and to make artists also work together. This can only happen through ART. This is essentially what our our philosophy is. So when we design South Asian projects we very much keep a lot of our history and civilization in mind when we are designing them.
Nidheesh: Are also into livelihood and sustainability? How do these artists or young artists from Nepal you are grooming and promoting? How do you help them find a market?
Surabhi: We have various pillars under Unnati so that is something that I would also like to clarify like, so through the trainings the women receive better tools, better equipment, better usage of material, better guidelines of using their resources and their existing skill sets to make products that are Savvy for the Urban Market, for today’s market requirements and demands. We have various marketing platforms by which we link them to the market making the entire ecosystem very self-sustainable.
We also impart a lot of Entrepreneurship skills to them because there should not be a heavy sense of dependency on us for their production or sales so we also encourage local to local production and sales and consumption, whereby the women’s groups are producing locally and selling locally as well. So there is not a constant dependency on a mediator or a broker or a buying house or an agent to constantly support them, they create a very self-sustainable ecosystem within themselves.
So this is another pillar that we have under the craft and livelihood. Foods and organic farming is our third, arts and culture I have already spoken about, culture and hospitality is what Unnati cultural village is all about. So through the hospitality space a lot of people get groomed and engaged through cultural hospitality and they immediately get absorbed into the market space. We have the South Asian project that we just spoke about which is called the SATH project and SATH is for seven countries and it also means together and the full form of it is South Asian Association for transcultural heritage. So these are the five pillars of Unnati. For sustainability and craft and and livelihood and empowerment this is what we’re doing.
Nidheesh: Since Nepal has gone through some know difficult times through this very difficult earthquakes I think you’re doing something around the local architecture and using those earlier building materials.Tell us about that.
Surabhi: It’s very interesting the earthquake that happened in 2015 and what we realised is that the traditional design that is used in the Villages has very scientific and sound knowledge systems behind it so a) the materials are locally available and b) they were also not completely earthquake proof and resistance but they suffered a lot lesser damage during the earthquake as opposed to foreign buildings and materials that were used during the construction.So we really went back to using traditional building materials and because of not only the scientific and traditional wisdom set behind it but it’s also very adaptable to the region and to the Climate. So it can be rebuilt easily, local materials can be found very easily, local skill sets for building of such homes can be developed very easily within the ecosystem and then when we engaged in such practices, we also built the local skill sets in such a way that tomorrow if such a calamity were to strike again, the local community has a capacity to rebuild their own homes without having the dependency of someone to really come to their rescue.
Whenever we really do a project we really study uh and do a very deep analysis of material of geography, climate, traditional practices, traditional wisdoms and the science behind it and then the program is designed accordingly. So even Unnati cultural Village have used with the local materials and local skill sets of that space to really showcase that space and it is rather heartbreaking I must say that we are the only living cultural Village now in that entire area because the entire space around us has become so urbanised and modern which also is a sign of prosperity and growth for the people, but people have really sort of forgotten that they’re they’re the traditional building materials their beautiful murals, the cooling mud that is used, the thatch from the forest that are used to really build their homes. We are the only living ecology now that that showcases this.
Nidheesh: How did this whole idea come up? How did this whole thing start? Where did it start? How did it come up like where did the idea come from?
Surabhi: So you know it’s actually been extremely organic as I shared before, it’s really taken its own course of time. We did a lot of research and study before we launched Unnati the cultural Village is two years young but the project of Unnati herself is five years young. So there has been a lot of study, a lot of research, a lot of design around the programs and it’s really grown on its own and it’s taken its own form and it’s constantly evolving. So maybe you know when we have the next samvaad in a few years you will see many more pillars added to Unnati and many more projects attached to what we are doing. Essentially our philosophy and objectives are very much intact that is to harness, to educate, to promote, to preserve and to enrich the creative and cultural industries.
Nidheesh: How big is your team? Who are the people? How many people are working with you? The Enterprise is huge I think. Tell me about your team.
Surabhi: It is actually extremely young and quite small but extremely dedicated hard working and passionate I think we are really driven by Passion that’s essentially what really drives us. It is the belief of what we’re doing and the passion behind it and no one is really a professor or a scholar and expert in this we’ve all grown organically, we learned through our experiences, we learn through people, I think all our collaborators, our partners, our artists, our artisans are the ones who are constantly I think more than we are enriching them they are enriching us. It’s been a very beautiful and a special journey and my core team is about 15 people in the foundation at UCV and the foundation together. We are 15 people but we have the entire family of Chaudhary group behind us.The entire support of Chaudhary group has really given the patronage, the support, the hand-holding that they have given us, it has gotten us to where we are today.
Nidheesh: So you are also organised residencies for young artists from Nepal and I think India as well so how does that happen? What do we tell our young artists in India if they want to have to listen probably apply?
Surabhi: 100%, most welcome
Nidheesh: How does that happen?
Surabhi: Very simple, we we are on all the social media portals, we have a website, we have our social media. Our email addresses and details are given and we are always open for collaborations so people can reach out to us anytime. In fact most of the residencies have also happened very organically based on the requests and the requirements of the people within Nepal and outside and people have applied very spontaneously and they’ve come and we’ve been extremely open and welcoming to all. So yes so please feel free to reach out.
Nidheesh: What can as India and Indians as a country do? How can we help artists and artisans from Nepal to find some kind of a platform to showcase their work here or expand their universe?
Surabhi: That’s a very important question. It’s something that has always been an ongoing effort from our part to take Nepal to the world. If the world can also extend a similar bridge to Nepal it would really be very encouraging for the creative ecosystem over here because there is a lot of talent, there’s a lot of aspiration and ambition for people to learn and grow, to have exchange programs. So I think the most encouraging way would be to start with universities and institutions who are willing to extend scholarships to extend learning programs workshops, to send their faculty to our universities, to have those crossovers.
From the education space the most impressionable and important time for an artist is their formative years of learning and growing and I think if collaboration start that early it really helps them build courage and confidence to enter into the mainstream. Also already develop existing ties with institutions for their future artistic careers whenever they Branch out individually and independently. I think from the education space if collaborations can start out it’ll be extremely beneficial.
Nidheesh: You also a connection with Rajasthan. When we talked last time, I gathered that. So when you go to Rajasthan Surabhi ji what do you what do you carry? What gifts do you carry from your Unnati village?
Surabhi: Rajasthan itself is like a treasure trove for every art under the Sun whether you call it paintings, murals, textiles, embroideries, dying, Pottery, jewellery, architecture. It’s like a treasure troven heaven. To add anything that would be different or variant from it. There are many Treasures that Nepal has as well and one of them are our pashminas which are very unique. It is very different from what you get in the other Himalayan regions of Pakistan, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Kashmir. So our blankets, shawls our pashminas, are what I would love to take.
Actually there is a very strong association with Rajasthan and Nepal, the royal family introduced a kind of block printing into Nepal after being very inspired by the Ajrakh and the other forms of the Contemporary block printing that happens in Rajasthan. Inspired by that, they brought it to Nepal and block printing started here and through that block printing we started developing Khas tool. Khas tools are also inspired by Rajasthani daris and blankets which are created by extremely soft organic cotton and it’s called kadambari. So the the kadambari prince are what has traveled from Rajasthan to Nepal and has become a national craft of Nepal, not the block printing but the entire process of of creating the Kadambari.
Nidheesh: This is such a great journey of how things start to travel.
Surabhi: That’s why when we talk about art and culture we can never talk about it in isolation because the contribution to that has been there for centuries. It’s not uh very recent, it does not belong to Nepal it does not belong to India. The origins of it go way longer than when we were there. This is what we try to do Unnati is to give homage to the Arts and to celebrate it and to celebrate it’s in inclusivity as much as we can.
Nidheesh: So while I see this is a pretty rich kind of a craft but at the same time look at this the impact of tradition has some which comes from the Hindu motives or Buddhist motives probably. What are the kind of modern motifs you get to notice in the modern Nepali art and aesthetic and art works?
Surabhi: There are just a lot of a lot of modern interpretation the traditional art is very inspired by Buddhism so in the hand motifs, the Tanga paintings, lotus flowers, a lot of Flora and Fauna, usage of colors, traditional techniques of using colors and all of this is a traditional practice but you will see it also in our Pottery, you’ll see it in our paintings, you’ll see it in architecture, you will see it on temples, you’ll see it in traditional dance forms, in costumes, in jewellery but it has all taken a very contemporary style. While the Lotus is there it has suddenly become more contemporary and it’s not as ornate but the delicate forms of the lotus are still very much there to be seen.
Traditional motives that are used for worship and prayers whether it’s metal craft or Pottery is very much there but it has become more contemporary so that people find a use for it in their homes not just in their temples. Similarly those forms have also traveled into carpets so carpet weaving is a very big industry of Nepal as well and you’ll find those forms and carpets which are again not extremely intricate and highly textured but a contemporary version of it. So it has retained itself but it has also become relevant to today’s times.
Nidheesh: So are there a new breed of designers who came into and you know worked with the artists to make it change into contemporary times and and their utility?
Surabhi: We don’t really have a very strong design ecosystem but yes the export houses here are what the design ecosystem are. So we get a lot of feedback from buyers, from Agents, from international market trends and based on those feedbacks and market requirements a lot of the designs are then fine-tuned and made more contemporary.
Nidheesh: I think we are just about getting to be 40 minutes now, anything that you think that we have missed out on?
Surabhi: I think we can talk about the vision of Unnati and where we would like to see it.
Nidheesh: Where would you like to see Unnati in next five years?
Surabhi: I would really like Unnati to be resonated with as a strong representation of Nepal and through the Unnati platform people should have a new appreciation and resonance with Nepal. Nepal is currently associated with the Majestic Himalayas, the flora fauna, its natural beauty, the land of the Buddha, of Peace, of Tranquility but I feel the culture the Arts, her Cuisine, her crafts has not yet been explored and celebrated as much. In the next five years it is our vision to really bring it in the forefront, to bring it on a global platform and to create many such centers so that people have a whole new association with Nepal and coming to Nepal which is not just for her natural beauty and her peaceful regions but it’s also to have a very immersive experience in Nepal’s art and culture.
Nidheesh: Tell me one thing, after the whole structure of monarchy changed in Nepal and became a kind of a democracy, did things change between patronising art and architecture and aesthetic as we have witnessed?
Surabhi: The royal family really patronised the Arts to a large extent and that’s one of the real main reasons why a lot of the Nepali art has really stayed intact because it’s only in the last few decades that we are not a monocular sovereign country anymore, we’ve actually become a Democratic Republic.
While I would say that the Arts are still flourishing they are very much intact but the kind of patronage that was once dependent on the royal family, now there is a whole new breed of Royals and this applies to the whole world to the global scale at large not just to Nepal are industrialists, are hoteliers, are the corporates, the MNCs, the banks, the institutions, the public institutions are the new monarchy and the royalty of global Arts scene.
It is these institutions and the private sector that now needs to take a front stand and the responsibility to not only harness and Mentor but to preserve essentially what was and what should continue being in the art space and in the creative space.
Nidheesh: Thank you so much, such a wonderful kind of conversation. Thanks for taking your time and our best wishes to Unnati Foundation.
Surabhi: Thank you, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you and thank you for the opportunity.
