If you walk down the streets of Kathmandu, you can’t fail to notice its vibrant street art scene. When I first visited the city in 2018, I was taken aback by the juxtaposition of heritage buildings and slick urban iconography that defined the capital and its environs. Outside the Zoo in Patan, for example, a long grey wall is adorned with girls’ hand-prints. The prints flow from the pen of a schoolgirl, painted in her uniform, drawing on the wall with her back to the viewer. Above her, the English words ‘Wall of Hope’ float in a deliberate scrawl. In the corner of the work just visible is the signature ‘Pink Riches’—a Minneapolis-based street artist.
Continue reading Framing Women’s Rights in Nepali Street ArtAuthor: Charlotta Salmi
She is a Lecturer in Postcolonial and Global Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Her current research focuses on visual storytelling methods (graphic narratives, street art) and social movements in the Global South. She is PI for an interdisciplinary Sustainable Development project, Visualizing Violence in Graphic Awareness Campaigns in Nepal (with Dr Barbara Grossman-Thompson, California State University Long Beach, funded by the British Academy), and has two recent articles on 'Kathmandu’s Feminist Street Art' (with Dr Grossman-Thompson for SIGNS) and on 'The Global Graphic Protest Novel: India and Iran' (in PMLA).