Chalis Katesi Ramaula

2005 - Photography (Photography)

13.97 x 15.24 cm

Nagendra Gurung

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Chalis Katesi Ramaula is a series of 240 prints capturing Nagendra Gurung’s life, work, and colleagues from the construction sites where he has worked in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. When seen together, the sequence appears to have a cinematic temporality, as one feels the passing of the years he has endured as a migrant worker. Gurung’s subjectivity is highly present, even when looking at the most banal scenes of cranes, concrete, and other machinery, which are rapidly transforming the landscape and society of the Gulf into its own version of capitalist futurism built through the exploitation of others. Taken with his phone’s camera, t?he size of the images follow the ratio and size of a phone’s screen, thus capturing the audience’s attention through a familiar, subjective representation of ‘reality’; in this case, the harsh reality of global capitalism as it is lived through the body and eyes of the photographer/worker. Gurung’s contemplation of the world, therefore, touches upon the divisional lines of work and leisure, turning the act of shooting a photograph into political, micro-political resistance.

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Since the mid-2000s, Nagendra Gurung has practiced photography in parallel to his life as a migrant worker in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. He currently works as a bulldozer operator at the construction site of a large underground water channel for Al-Qassim city in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Taken with his cell phone, his photographs depict his everyday life as a migrant laborer, meticulously cataloging his worksite, living quarters, and colleagues. With a clear sensibility for patterns and forms, his gaze unpacks the harsh labor conditions of ‘guest workers’ who are heavily dehumanized in the places that hire them, yet they are the backbone of the Gulf’s financial success. His images are a testament to the inherent violent structures within global capitalism.

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Colors:

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• architecture.n.01
• urbanity.n.02
• labor.n.01
• capitalism.n.01
• global.s.01