Shrine Empire presents Dūr-darāz, a solo show by contemporary sculptor Awdhesh Tamrakar. Awdhesh unearths his heritage—so dūr-darāz in time—from his family archives and local oral histories. It is this memory, recovered in fragments, that he sculpts into fragmented pieces of land mass from recycled paper-pulp in Muted Ground, harkening to a time when Pancham Nagar was known for its paper board (gaṭṭā) factory as well as its metalsmiths.
Awdhesh attempts this—not so much to preserve as much as to salvage—by recreating the aesthetics of crumpled photographs from his father’s photo-studio in Pital-Khana, literally meaning a brass workshop. His deliberate mutilation of the surface and the terrain-like undulation of the creased paper denies the viewer an easy view for there are no easy answers here.