The Weight of Our Remembrance explores the space where death, devotion, and the natural world converge — revealing the quiet burden that sacred rituals leave behind. In Newa traditions, death is not the end, but a passage.

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This work began with personal memory. Growing up in Kathmandu, I often sat with my family near the cremation grounds by the Bishnumati River — the scent of smoke, milk tea, and ash drifting across the water. Those early moments shaped my understanding of mortality — not as fear, but transition.

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Years later, along the Ganges in Kolkata, I saw the same reverence — and the same neglect.Half-burnt cloth, plastic flowers, foam trays, broken idols. The river meant to cleanse, left carrying what we discard. Water carries prayers, ashes, and the soul’s release. We turn to rivers to hold our grief, scatter remains, float offerings, submerge what was once touched by the dead. But what does the water feel when we give it the weight of our sorrow?

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“How does the water hold so much and still keep flowing? Has anyone asked what our rivers remember?”
Through photographs and found ritual remnants, this work reflects on remembrance — both sacred and burdened. It asks us to consider not only how we honor the dead, but what we ask of the Earth in that process.
The rivers hold our losses. But they also speak — and sometimes, they return what we hoped would be washed away.

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