Karan Shrestha
a flow disrupted; realigns
(2022–ongoing) 

Water connects across histories, regions, and forms of life, yet its flows can often be disturbed and diverted. Karan Shrestha’s a flow disrupted; realigns draws on this condition, expanding the format of the 17th-century Newari thyasaphu (folded books or folios of handmade paper) to map the layered realities of water in Nepal today. Historically, such manuscripts illustrated teachings on the subject of droughts and rain patterns, mapping the climatic conditions of South Asia and the social consequences of scarcity and famine. 

Shrestha’s expansive, ongoing work adapts this traditional form to hold together contemporary words and images. The project gathers essays, report excerpts, poetry, oral myths, and individual testimonies to narrate the state of water in 21st-century Nepal. Through his collection and collage of these materials, Shrestha reveals the deep entanglement of issues including climate change, state negligence, caste-based violence, infectious disease, flora and fauna, and the shrinking of wetlands through damming and extraction. 
This unfolding project examines how historical forms of knowledge production and sharing might be mobilised to confront the urgent ecological, political, and social questions confronting us today. By combining research, testimony, and visual storytelling, the work becomes both a record and provocation — insisting on the need to see water not just as a resource to be used, but also as a shared basis for life itself.