Age: 10
Grade: 5
Topic: Self Portrait
This artwork is created by Rebika Subedi, a 10 years old. She is a Grade 5 student in The Excelsior School, Swoyambhu. She is also a participant of Artudio’s Spring Art Camp 2015.
Rebika’s first day of Spring Art Camp, she has already shown potential of creating some great art work. Though, 7th April 2015, was “Nepal Bandh”, Rebika still made and effort attended the Art Camp. She also brought along her sister Ayan Subedi, 8 and her neighbor Prashmsha Adhikari, 8. Rebika had mixed emotions about the first sessions because not all her friends were able to attend. However, she was very excited and happy to get started.
The Mentors of Artudio Art Camp started the session with four participants. The participant’s first exercise was to draw a self-portrait. The participants looked at themselves in the mirror for a while before getting started. They were asked to draw themselves as they saw themselves and also create the space they wanted to live in. Rebika drew her portrait with stylish hair and stick-on tattoo of a pig on left cheek. She did not portray herself as others would see her but how she imagines herself. She also created a beautiful pattern on her t-shirt sleeve with the word ‘violet’ repeating itself. Rebika has also added a very sensitive image on her t-shirt, a figure holding a poster with the words “STOP- STRIKE”.
This piece of work by the young artist Rebika provokes a lot of questions about our political environment and its effects on such young minds. Young people are listening the media, their families talk and the watch the protests going on in such a personal level. ‘Nepal Bandh’ is an expression that the Nepali people have accepted as a normal happening. They have accepted it and most feel that there is nothing they are capable of doing. The question of how the government is diseased with corruption and how it is truly scarring Nepal’s youth. This visual expression from Rebika is a true impression of the current time and space we are living in. With art Rebika is able to communicate of the difficult situation that the millions of innocent kids are facing in our beautiful county Nepal.