KATHMANDU, March 8: The first day of Care Nepal’s Women’s Week 2013 managed by Kgarira.com began with a charity scooter rally at 8am at Kathmandu Durbar Square on Friday.
Despite the petrol shortage, over 80 people participated in the rally. Media personality Malvika Subba was declared Care Nepal’s Goodwill Ambassador for 2013 prior to the rally and she flagged off the rally which covered various junctions of the capital before concluding at Patan Durbar Square.[Break]
The fund collected from the registration of participants is set to go to Saathi’s Domestic Violence Survivors’ Shelter and Hamri Baini, both organizations working for women.
A short talk program, on the various aspects of Women’s Week 2013 and how the event aims at celebrating the International Women’s Day, was organized at Patan Durbar Square with Cathy Riley, Assistant Country Director of Care Nepal, Shreya Singh, Communication and PR Manager at Care Nepal and Malvika Subba.
Director of Art Department at Nepal Academy of Fine Arts and Chief Guest of the program, Shanta Kumar Rai inaugurated the art exhibition followed by a short speech and distributed canvases to participants of the art workshop.
Workshop Coordinator from Da Mind Tree (DMT) Raju Pithakote, in his welcome speech, acknowledged the opportunity to present the condition of women through the medium of colors. “The paintings that are on display here provide strong voices that will hopefully help in raising awareness about the gender-based violence which is prevalent in our country,” he said.
Around 20 artistes participated in the workshop after which they sat down to paint on the themes related to women and sub-themes like struggle and strength. Many paintings portrayed hardships of women represented through abstract mediums like the one by Erina Tamrakar in which she has painted a red chili and geographical aspects like portrayal of a woman as a country and as hills.
Paintings by foreign artists were also put on display alongside the Nepali artistes. Sorada Vanikkal from Thailand painted one titled ‘A piece of personality’, Caroline Aquin’s series on dancing portrayed feet, waist, shoulder and ‘mudras’ of a woman dancing and Sonia Josserand-Mercier’s ‘Glimpse of a Mermaid’ and ‘Lilith Revisited’ were symbolic representation of the power of women. While the mermaid presented both the intense desire and profound fear of the feminine; Lilith, in Judaism mythology, is Adam’s twin and the Anima, the feminine subconscious of man. “For me, Lilith is a representation of the free woman, strong and independent, with great powers of seduction and mystery,” said Sonia.
The exhibition is scheduled to go on till March 10 and the second day of the event will include outdoor documentary and film screenings at Kathmandu Durbar Square starting from 6pm.
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