Assembly of the Gods, After Raphael, Kathmandu, Nepal, 10m x 2m, 2012–23

This image draws direct inspiration from Raphael Sanzio’s The Council of the Gods (1518), reimagining the classical divine summit as a chaotic, transcultural, hyper-detailed spiritual congress. Set within the sacred architecture of Kathmandu’s Patan Temple complex—a UNESCO World Heritage site—the work assembles an overwhelming array of gods, prophets, saints, spirits, and mythic creatures from across time, space, and belief systems. Hindu deities converse with Buddhist monks, Egyptian gods stand beside Christian saints, while esoteric symbols and animist spirits thread the space in a reverent, visual polyphony.

What emerges is a monumental “uber-spiritual conference,” a celestial parliament negotiating the ruptures of contemporary existence. The digitally collaged scene—saturated in luminous hues and layered with pixelated intricacies—embodies both homage and rupture. Raphael’s harmonious Renaissance composition is here exploded, pluralised, and imbued with the post-digital condition. Like Raphael’s dream of divine concord, this work aspires toward unity, yet acknowledges the fragmentation of globalised spirituality. The collision of religious iconographies and cultural epochs affirms David Morgan’s observation that sacred imagery in the modern age exhibits a “multivocality” that reflects the hybrid, porous nature of belief in a globalised world (Morgan, 2005, p. 95). Raphael once wrote, “Art is a harmony parallel to nature” (Raphael, 2000, p. 122). Assembly of the Gods reinterprets that harmony as discordant resonance—a fractured, sublime effort to gather the divine fragments of a splintered world.

Created both before and after the devastating 2015 earthquake that struck the square, the work resonates with the tension between cultural resilience and fragility. The earthquake’s shadow lingers in the fractured, layered composition—echoing the physical and spiritual upheaval experienced by the region, and underscoring the precarious balance between destruction and the enduring sacred.

References:
Morgan, D. (2005). The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. University of California Press.
Raphael, quoted in Jones, J. (2000). Raphael: A Passionate Life. London: Random House, p. 122.