Almost everyone in the art community knows or has heard about Sujan Chitrakar, the artist who has already devoted around two decades in teaching art and is still as enthusiastic as ever to talk about art and teach it as a subject. “I want to be able to give more time to teaching,” he says, when asked why he stepped down from his position as the Head of Department at Kathmandu University Art+Design in 2019.

Chitrakar is currently an associate professor and hopes to get back to making art again. He believes the art scene in Nepal needs more critical discussion for its growth and more ownership for growth. In an interview with the Post’s Srizu Bajracharya, Chitrakar talks about teaching art as a subject, and the great divide between artists and the community.

Did you always want to be an artist?

The art field was my last choice, as my father and grandfather were also artists—they used to make signboards, acrylic paintings and used to do a lot of ritual art as well. So, growing up like any child, I knew if I didn’t do well this was where [the family business] I would eventually be pulled into. And because I grew around artists and art, I never saw it as a profession. More so because it was a time when our marks decided what we should study, and I was good in studies, even in science, so my teachers I thought I would do good in the subject. But later as I studied science, I realised that I would do better in the art field. And then when my father saw me making artworks, he encouraged me to pursue arts and after that I joined Lalitkala, and went on to continue my studies in India.

Do you see a difference in how you and your family perceive art? And did you ever try to change their way of understanding art?

For my family, the main priority of the artwork was to fulfill the requirement of the client. But as I went deeper into the artfield, art became a form of my expression. It became my own vocabulary for my thoughts. Initially, my father really appreciated my acrylic and oil paintings but I may have slowly distanced him from my work.

But I never felt that I should change his understanding of art, all I did sometimes was support their works through various tools. I have learned a lot from my father too. And I have always felt that I should respect their school of thought. They have their own pattern of working, and ancestral knowledge that they were continuing. I don’t think I needed to meddle in that. I never felt that I should change their ideas. I don't think it's necessary for me to change them either. I believe art should be left to an individual’s perception. Art should not convince people, it should lure them into thinking about things.

That is something many artists have said, ‘art should be open to an audience perception’, but why do you think that is?

We all have our own upbringing, and our various experiences in life is what helps us understand things. Sometimes how we understand things also depends on how we each think. And I think in matters of subjective works, I shouldn’t be teaching people to see things my way, it’s after all the subjective experiences that make artwork meaningful. All we can do is create a space where people can achieve a similar understanding, but I don’t think everyone should understand everything in the same pattern someone does. When I admire a sunrise and what it makes me feel is personal; how others perceive that same experience is purely an individual idea—I can’t tell them how they should feel. It’s the same with art. But having said that an artist must work towards making their work relatable, a piece of art can be more powerful when it can tell stories about people.

Do you think we have been able to give an experience through art?

I think so, haven’t we? But if we are only taking drama, theatre, movies as art then maybe we are limiting ourselves. I think we have to understand everything as art, but many take art as something that we can appreciate just in the gallery although we experience it every day, and for that reason, many people think to themselves that they cannot understand art.

Art has more to do with how you appreciate things in aesthetic experience. We all have our own natural art instincts. We have to enhance our taste, sound, visual and understanding to

appreciate things. And that is what we slowly manifested in higher forms and we made certain objects that are now limited to white cubes. But if you go back, and think about weaving or even things that we take as ordinary, such as singing lok geet or wearing clothes of our taste, even that is an art experience. Even our aama choosing the patterns of a saree is an art experience, it’s just that when we put these experiences in the gallery, many people believe that understanding is beyond them.

However, I also understand that artists have their own egos and sometimes that gets in their way of giving an experience to the audience—their idea becomes more important than the sentiments of the larger community. But I don’t think all art needs to be serious and political, although in a way everything is political. It can sometimes just entertain and excite people.

But one of the reasons we haven’t been able to create the feeling of ownership is because our artists have not been able to create enough works that relate to other people’s lives. We need more public art but we have not seen much happen so far. Look at Ronald Rael’s seesaw installation in the United States, at the Mexico border wall, that was so powerful—that art brought people together. But that is something that we are missing here in the art scene here.

Do you think there is still a great divide between artists and the people—given that the latest initiative of the Yeti installations made for the Visit Nepal 2020 backfired?

I think the idea backfired because the artists didn’t take some things into consideration. There are different stages of how people understand things. In art, we usually talk about our personal ideas, egos and understanding and as artists, we pamper our egos. And then after that, we come to communal, national, then universal, human sentiment. And I think every individual has different layers of these sentiments. But sometimes for an artist, their personal understanding overpowers the communal understanding. But you also have to understand that, we will be accepted more if we are able to adapt to the communal sentiment. The communal sentiment is more important and meaningful.

And that is what happened with the yeti installation, the artists treated the yeti installation just as another plain canvas conveying their ideas without realising what their imprints could mean to the larger community. But the yeti in itself was less questionable because it was the artist’s self-expression of a mythical being, it was Ang Tsering Sherpa’s self-expression.

Growing up, we have all been part of drawing classes and yet by the time we reach high school, art education is usually sidelined. Do you see how we treat art as a problem to how we see art?

Our education system is limited to understanding everything in linguistic interpretation, we describe everything with language. And I think our education kills our natural senses, of understanding things by seeing, listening and imagining. We are told books are our answers.

In elementary classes art is taught as an extracurricular activity, the academic setting has never acknowledged art as a tool to make people understand about a concept. The school itself is a place where our education has become a vehicle for our various professions rather than being a place of learning and understanding. The whole system is categorising our knowledge whereas art is also a way of understanding things, it's about how an individual observes things.

As children, we try to taste everything, even toys, to understand what it is. We learn by triggering our senses, but after a certain point in school our natural sense of understanding is set aside and we are trained to think a certain way through the use of text and language. We teach children ‘A’ for ‘Apple’ but we fail to give them an experience of what an apple tastes like and we never ask them do they like the taste or not? Or what memory it triggers. The education system, at least during our time, never gave space for personal understanding. And that is maybe why the education system has become so directive. Our education has separated everything, but integrated learning is important to set a base of knowledge.

Another reason teaching art is challenging is because our art history is not documented. We don’t know about the art that influenced our societies or the trends of art that the country saw in different intervals of time. We don’t have an art museum. If you ask somebody about the contemporary art scene in the country, you will get different answers.

What does KU’s art education practice look like?

I think our department is quite liberal; we try to nurture our students’ passion and their hobbies. We try to preserve the ambitions of students and prepare them for the market because we also want them to be able to pursue a profession. And I never think that all students that come to study arts will become artists, but I do believe that what we teach will be useful to them in various capacities. We try to prepare them for real life. At KU we also keep revising our courses every four years, so we are relevant.

We also encourage our students to be inquisitive, and respect each and everyone’s individuality. We try to nurture their sensibility and help them with their skills.

Have you also faced any administrative challenges while leading an art school?

I have been lucky that I could create a foundation for learning art from scratch, and from the very beginning KU Art+ Design has practiced its autonomy. I guess individually our students might have experienced dissatisfaction but we have tried our best to support students based on what we think might work for them. But right now I think the challenge for us is our infrastructure, as our learning requires more space than usual classes of other subjects do.

Why did you step down from your position of Head of Department in KU Art and Design?

It’s been many years since I led the art and design department, and I have had a great experience. But I felt like I was not being able to give enough time to the plans that I had for myself. That position takes a lot of your time. I also wanted to focus on teaching then getting stuck in administration works. Also, I think it’s time for a new leadership.