Artsberg Enterprise Limited

Monsoon-Reflections

by Stephanie Spray
color, 22 min, 2007

Drawing its title from a poem by the Nepali poet Lekhnath Paudyal, who depicts the monsoon season as sublime and blissful, this video focuses instead on the melancholy and grit of two female Nepali field hands as they carry out their monsoon routines in Lekhnath, Nepal. It is a sensorial riposte to Paudyal's idealistic depiction of the monsoon as 'joyous from start to finish,' by means of reflections upon labor, gender, and fleeting pleasure in rural Nepal.