After Eden

After Eden is a body of work which attempts to mediate between the evocative past and the elusive present informed in response to the changing landscapes on the notion of development.

Amidst the Garden of Eden lies empty elysian fields, still spaces, and the silence that echoes in them. Located in the southern outskirt of the Kathmandu Valley are Khokana and Bungamati, twin villages encompassing an archeological site, Ku Dey, out to the very edge of the foothills of the valley. But as the fog rises, one begins to see that though the sacred lands inherent beauty, they are tempered with modern signs of intrusion and degradation.

It is believed by the locals that their land was blessed by goddess Shikali Devi to begin a new settlement. Decades later, the land has been proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, waiting for restoration and preservation. But lately it serves as a ground for a socio-political battle, as the land poses to be under threat by the State initiated Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway, a 78-kilometre “fast track” road conceived to bring tourists from an un-built airport in Tarai to the capital in just 90 minutes, a velocity whose casualty would be the displacement of the settlements that remain dotted across the sacred land. The indigenous inhabitants unite to save the last vestiges of their motherland against the ecological destruction and unsolicited displacement in the foreseeable future.

After Eden is a body of work which attempts to mediate between the evocative past and the elusive present informed in response to the changing landscapes on the notion of development. The tainted terrains are a constant reminder of how the notion of progress trumps people, continually erasing and overwriting the land and memory. Through the series of physical traces rupturing the organic terrain are questions raised upon the need for this emerging fast track as it slices through these vast scapes.