about
Over the years, Uma Shankar Shah and Dr. Seema Sharma Shah have established themselves as Nepal’s foremost printmakers and two of the most prominent artists. While Uma Shankar ji hails from Janakpur, Dr Seema Sharma Shah traces her ancestry back to Lahore where her grandfather served as the family priest to Maharajah Ranjit Singh's family. During the partition in 1947, her family fled to India and settled in Varanasi – the holiest of cities for Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims alike. It is in this city that both Uma and Seema pursued studies and met. The piety of the city of Varanasi seems to have seeped into the core of their very beings and into their work. Over the last eighteen years in Kathmandu, both Uma and Seema have discovered together the religious pulse of this city. The rendition of their landscapes seems to be the subconscious merging of their Indo-Nepalese experience. Both artists source their inspiration from the rich heritage and culture of Nepal and India; in the stories of the Ramayan and in the avatars and pantheon of the Gods. Their prints serve as a documentation of the festivals and jatras which breathe life into the cityscape of Kathmandu, and Janakpur. They both have recently done many works on societal issues that Nepal faces.
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