SUNDAYS WITH ARPANA

Arpana Rayamajhi on her Nepali heritage, her journey to becoming a jewellery designer, and how rock music inspires her.

Arpana Rayamajhi’s kaleidoscopic jewellery takes you on a journey. Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, she studied painting and sculpture at The Cooper Union in New York, before founding ArpanaJewels in 2014. Inspired by the colour palette, tribal cultures and craftsmanship of Nepal, her jewellery collections are marked by precious stones, winding snakes and beaded tapestries - often seen on the hands of the world’s most charismatic actors and rock stars. She and her gleaming, electrical energy have appeared on the pages of Vogue, an Apple campaign, L’Oreal ads, and even down the Victoria’s Secret runway. We caught up with her one giddy Sunday morning in New York to talk pop culture, Patan and learning to embrace her Nepalese roots. 

Hi Arpana. What three words describe you best? 

Arpana… Arpana, Arpana! 

What is something that most people don’t know about you? 

I sing, I play the guitar, I’m now acting and I loveeee it. I also love ping pong and mimicking accents, dialects and languages. Oh, and dancing. 

How did you get to where you are now? Tell us about your journey so far.

I grew up around film and TV. My mother was an actor and my dad always drew and painted. The arts weren’t really encouraged as a profession because life could be so hard, but they definitely weren’t discouraged in my family. My mother was in a unique place because she was one of the first female actors in the industry (the history of filmmaking in Nepal isn’t that old) and although it didn’t pay very well, she loved the work. I saw and understood that growing up so I think I really started there. I knew I wanted to be in a band, perform, sing and make art because when I was growing up things were very different from how they are now. Everything has changed so quickly in Nepal in the last ten years or so. I started performing with local jazz bands and then applied to Cooper Union School of Art, got in, and it all started from there. I knew that leaving home meant I would have to, for my sake, at least attempt to live the life I had always dreamed of. Despite being a jeweler now, I still feel the need to grow. And maybe they’re right, the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’m studying acting now and I feel incredible about it. 

What do you enjoy most about working with your hands, whether that be jewellery making, painting or sculpture?

To know that I am the sole maker of the piece and the stillness I feel when I am working. 

What do you love about Nepali craftsmanship? How does Nepali culture inspire and influence your work?

When I was living in Nepal, like most young Nepali kids, I wanted a piece of the west. American media clearly affects the world and when people say “globalization”, I really think of “Americanization”. So growing up I often didn’t understand the value of the culture I was living in, what I was surrounded by and what our people had done historically and continue to do. 

We have a saying in Nepal that goes, “Najik ko deuta hela” which roughly translates to “ignoring the god near you”. It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t into all the different things Nepal and the world had to offer then, but I wasn’t aware of how much it would stay with me and how much it meant to me. 

After living in the US for a few years and missing home, I had a whole new set of eyes. I saw that what we did was very unique and beautiful and historical in so many ways. This was the start of it all. Nepal is a mix of many ethnicities and we are a tiny but very diverse country. There is a seamless beautiful exchange of all our cultures and traditions and we get along super well. That is maybe the one thing about my home that I get worried about sometimes: the potential erosion of social fabric and diversity. Seeing how Americanized and how much social media is affecting everything, even thoughts and perceptions, I find can be very problematic. 

What do you miss most about home? 

Everything.

You are such a colourful person! What colours do you associate with your home and which ones do you find making their way into your jewellery and artworks most often? 

Haha! It’s funny you should say that and I generally am very colorful, but lately, I have been wearing so much black and dark colours. I like warm colours to live in and in terms of work, all hues and gradients are necessary for me. All colours are my favourite. I could never pick one. I don’t know what having a favourite colour is. 

As well as being a jeweller you also had an online magazine of disposable photographs that narrate people’s days. What is the story behind this project? What draws you to observing individual lives? How do you observe yours?

I started DISPOSE with Bruno Levy and Alex Hollender in 2012. DISPOSE was an online magazine of photographs shot by individuals around the world and they would show us 24 hours of their lives. We had the Flaming Lips do a set for us, four kids from the Kibera Slum, a tampon-maker who makes tampons out of banana fibers in Rwanda, artists, strippers, nurses. Anyone who could share a snippet of their lives in a raw and true way. It was a beautiful project, pre-Instagram, and self-funded, so it had a short life. To see how people live and how they see the world, what they choose to show, what they choose to hide is very telling of all of us. This is especially true now that social media is such a big part of our lives. Like I said, I love being an observer because I learn more from it than just projecting my ideas. 

What are your greatest inspirations? 

Inspirations are endless but I would say that the arts inspire me a lot and really, everything around me. I never know what draws me to a certain thing and why but the process of figuring that out can also be really inspiring. 

How does pop and rock culture inspire you? 

When I say pop, I don’t specifically mean music. I mean what is popular in general because it’s very telling of a time and of us as people, what we like, what we value, what we understand and what we don’t. It also makes me feel like an observer and I like that feeling. 

Rock music, on the other hand, I grew up around and I still find the guitar solos and the energy so amazing. I want to use a sound to describe the feeling and that’s what rock and roll is. I sound like a cliché but it’s that GRRRRR feeling! Plus, the wrongness of everything that rock and roll, punk, and even metal music stood for was something that I was really into. Growing up in the early 2000s was interesting. We had Marilyn Manson, Eminem and the rise of really cheesy pop, hip hop music, and metal bands all at the same time. It was a fun, interesting time where “sellouts” and “indie” and totally anti-corporate feelings all beautifully and simultaneously existed. Counterculture is necessary and to see it die down now is heartbreaking. Maybe I should write a song about that with three chords.

Which song will always get you dancing? And which one will you sing in the shower? 

I love disco and electronic music. No particular song really but the majority of modern popular dance-y songs don’t work for me. Same with singing. Because I also studied music before Cooper Union and now acting, I can never pick a favourite song. The older I get I realise, I can’t just pick one of anything.

At the end of a busy day, how do you take time to slow down?

I love a glass of wine and herbs. And usually a movie at the end of the night. 

Tell us about a challenge you’ve faced which initially seemed negative but turned out to be positive.

Being broke makes me very creative and driven. 

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far?

Life is really hard, so you have to be strong to live it fully and to make it mean something.

Describe your dream Sunday…

To wake up as an actress on a Sunday and know I have to go to work. Apologies! I’m in a super giddy mood despite the coronavirus scare and lockdown of New York. A perfect dream Sunday and every other day would be by the ocean, with preferably no people around, sunny, hot, but with lots of fruits and animals. 

Where can we find you on a Sunday in New York? And in Kathmandu? 

If it's nice out, taking a walk around downtown Manhattan after a really nice lunch. And in Kathmandu, walking around Basantapur, Thamel or Patan and eating some nice Newari snacks. I am a lucky woman to be from Kathmandu, which was historically Newar. Newari people make really good food and the arts are amazing. I’d also spend time seeing my friends and we would most likely inject some form of music or art into our hangout. 

What is the smallest thing that makes you the happiest?

Seeing animals. Just to be able to see a dog walk in New York makes me feel so happy. I could be the grumpiest person on a given day and then I see a cute dog and nothing will stop me from being happy. 

If you had to pick one work of art, one book, one film, and one historical figure who inspires you what would it be?

Sushila Rayamajhi for a historical figure, The Little Prince for a book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for a film (wow, I didn’t realise my favorite movie would be a gut-wrenching one) and art… I don’t know. I love Ellsworth Kelly and Cy Twombly. I think besides Sushila Rayamajhi I am not sure of anything else.  

What is next?

Let’s see how the world does. It feels absolutely strange and odd, yet relieving to know that I am writing this amidst a big virus outbreak. I was supposed to try and get an agent and start acting this year, but I haven’t slowed down in almost four years and maybe I will use this difficult time (life is hard like I said!) to make work and build myself as an actor and an artist and learn how to slow down. 

I think a few big lessons this virus has taught us is to respect wildlife and not to abuse and kill it, that our collective lifestyle isn’t sustainable for any of us, that we need to be there for each other and be more community-driven and not just look out for ourselves. Great suffering can bring great understanding and hopefully we all see the positive of this alongside the negative so that we can evolve and alter our general way of being. We have seen wars, diseases of so many kinds throughout history, yet every generation maybe needs that one unifying thing that teaches us that we are all in this together. It’s sad but I don’t think we will ever learn without experiencing something directly. So, hopefully, we come out of this stronger, kinder, and a little more willing to make changes. 

WHAT SHE WORE