This piece is among a plethora of art that is on display at the Himalayan Art Festival, currently being held at the Nepal Art Council in Babar Mahal. Organised by E-Arts Nepal, an expanding online art gallery, the festival is in its second year and is featuring artwork from a range of disciplines, artists and regions.

“This year, we are displaying paintings, paubha, sculpture, ceramics, photographs, print, carvings and performance art, trying to cover different aspects of Nepali traditional and contemporary art,” said Erina Tamrakar, a festival coordinator.

“It seems as if the public is also interested in this exhibition,” said Asha Dangol, primary coordinator of the festival. “On the first day alone, we had five hundred odd visitors. Yesterday, around 250 people came. We expect this number to grow as we approach the final days.”

The festival also features art programmes for children and art talks. One such talk on Thursday, between Madan Chitrakar, who is principal of the Sirjana College of Fine Art, paubha artists Mukti Singh Thapa and Uday Charan Shrestha, and visual artist Sujan Chitrakar discussed contemporary art in relation to the traditional paubha. The talk was moderated by Swosti Kayastha Rajbhandari, curator at the Nepal Art Council.

“On Friday, we have an art performance by six artists and on the final day, we will have an art show for around 40 kids where we will speak to them about art and their favourite pieces from the festival,” said Dangol.