Tittled The Unwilling Travellers, the book imagines sacred sculptures taken out of the Kathmandu Valley over the past century and now sitting in museums and private collections across the West as reluctant migrants, still adjusting, decades on, to lives in exhibit stands or in underground storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I first went to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert I was upset to see the Nepali gods inside glass boxes,\u201d Shrestha says. \u201cAs humans we migrate with purpose, but the gods were forced away from their places. They are still waiting to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shrestha, 27, works mainly as a fashion photographer. He studied fine arts at Kathmandu University before moving to London for a master\u2019s in digital photography at Ravensbourne University, but he has kept a personal practice going alongside the commercial work built around Nepali myth, ritual and memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n TRAVELLER GODS<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shrestha\u2019s book does not try to settle the history that Nepal\u2019s living gods were stolen and turned into \u2018art\u2019 pieces. Instead he works on an imagined premise that the gods after years away, became travellers themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the photographs, masked and ornamented figures move through ordinary London life \u2013 waiting at bus stops, cycling down streets, sitting alone in parks. \u201cI explored the cityscapes of London to use it as a space opposite to where the gods should belong,\u201d Shrestha says. \u201cI wanted the gods to look a bit lost, yet trying to cope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Nepali ritual tradition, a mask made and consecrated for performance is understood to hold divine presence, not simply represent it. That belief runs underneath the whole project, and it is also why museum display troubled Shrestha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce it\u2019s inside a museum, it\u2019s given an inventory number,\u201d he said. \u201cA museum might keep the item carefully, but does not preserve its original meaning and purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shrestha stops short of calling his project activism, though he does not rule it out completely: \u201cThe exhibition begins as an artistic investigation, but it inevitably enters the political conversation surrounding restitution and repatriation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aayush Shrestha\u2019s Master\u2019s graduation exhibition was on at Photobook Cafe in the UK from 11-13 September. He plans to publish the book in Nepal soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/229aadbe-9636-471d-b541-e24dc00d4996_4000x2667-1024x683.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/951c506e-4b6f-4a16-8c42-d1df797ff94c_4000x2666-1024x682.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image-1-1-1024x682.jpg\")