Amol Patil
06 Sep - 04 Oct 2014
AMOL PATIL
Social Theatre
6 September - 4 October 2014
Nature Morte is pleased to announce the opening of a new, secondary space in Delhi, to be called "Petite Morte," with a solo exhibition of works by Amol Patil.
Amol Patil's works function as layers of references, memorials, and protests. They hark back to grassroots performance traditions, almost unknown village customs and social theatre, charged with socio-economic comment. The artist recalls the struggles of his playwright and civic labourer father, while commenting on the plight of the migrant worker. Amol Patil's family saw the arts as a means of resistance while his father's plays delve into the ruthless wreckage that migration to a city inflicted on the lives of country-born labourers. The relationship between the migrant worker and the city has always been fraught with unease. It is a shifting, tenuous, and often-treacherous tie, one in which caste almost inevitably raises its ugly head. Kisan Gunaji Patil (the artist's father) worked for Mumbai's municipality and scripted absurdist Marathi plays that took up the challenges faced by the migrant workers in the city, addressing their alienation and their angst. His plays also operated as an avant-garde form of theatre that went against its more institutionalized, caste-driven counterpart.
Caste as an issue plays a vital role in Amol's work, a sensitivity Amol has inherited from his father's dramas. Caste and the rough hand these labourers are dealt are not mutually exclusive. Mumbai's sanitation workers even today come into daily physical contact with highly toxic septic waste, a condition gingerly ignored much like still rampant caste abuse. Works such as Detritus, satirize this situation, playing on notions of 'impurity,' 'pollution' and 'ritualistic cleansing' by using human hair and a deconstructed Walkman, a constant tool of his father's playwriting days.
Social Theatre, the work from which the show draws its title, is a stinging remark on the issues of migrancy among laborers. It is also a sobering reminder that, "Capital is the most marked Diaspora" and nearly everyone is trapped in it. The video Asylum of the Dead was shot in a psychiatric hospital and has the artist in a bizarre performance, mimicking various stage props. The six boards on the sides that recall stage wings recycle photographs of production stills from Gunjai's play Postcard.
The work entitled Maquette uses the photographs of the same play as digital prints, linked together to form a scroll. Other works in the show (sculptures, videos and manipulated photographs) posit the object as the record and residue of a performance, inherently incomplete but also extending outside of themselves.
Gunaji died when Amol was quite young, and Amol draws on this and uses his art to familiarize himself with a lost parent. In this sense, Amol's art become a conscious effort to engage with a personal past, creating a discourse between private memories, personal narratives, loss, filial affection, and larger economic and cultural histories.
Based in Mumbai, Amol graduated from Rachna Sansad in 2009 with a Post Diploma in Fine Arts. He has had one solo exhibition at Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, titled Social Theatre in 2013, has done several public performances between 2008 and 2012, has been included in group shows such as INSERT 2014 at the Indira Gandhi Center for the Arts, New Delhi; Decolonising Imaginaries at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, 2013;We Have Arrived Nowhere, 2nd Transnational Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013; World Event Young Artists, Gallery Backlit, Nottingham, 2012; and I C U Jest, at Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2012. He received a Merit Scholarship for Outstanding Performance from the Gallery Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai in 2009 and has recently returned from a month's residency in Glasgow, organised by Alexia Holt.
Social Theatre
6 September - 4 October 2014
Nature Morte is pleased to announce the opening of a new, secondary space in Delhi, to be called "Petite Morte," with a solo exhibition of works by Amol Patil.
Amol Patil's works function as layers of references, memorials, and protests. They hark back to grassroots performance traditions, almost unknown village customs and social theatre, charged with socio-economic comment. The artist recalls the struggles of his playwright and civic labourer father, while commenting on the plight of the migrant worker. Amol Patil's family saw the arts as a means of resistance while his father's plays delve into the ruthless wreckage that migration to a city inflicted on the lives of country-born labourers. The relationship between the migrant worker and the city has always been fraught with unease. It is a shifting, tenuous, and often-treacherous tie, one in which caste almost inevitably raises its ugly head. Kisan Gunaji Patil (the artist's father) worked for Mumbai's municipality and scripted absurdist Marathi plays that took up the challenges faced by the migrant workers in the city, addressing their alienation and their angst. His plays also operated as an avant-garde form of theatre that went against its more institutionalized, caste-driven counterpart.
Caste as an issue plays a vital role in Amol's work, a sensitivity Amol has inherited from his father's dramas. Caste and the rough hand these labourers are dealt are not mutually exclusive. Mumbai's sanitation workers even today come into daily physical contact with highly toxic septic waste, a condition gingerly ignored much like still rampant caste abuse. Works such as Detritus, satirize this situation, playing on notions of 'impurity,' 'pollution' and 'ritualistic cleansing' by using human hair and a deconstructed Walkman, a constant tool of his father's playwriting days.
Social Theatre, the work from which the show draws its title, is a stinging remark on the issues of migrancy among laborers. It is also a sobering reminder that, "Capital is the most marked Diaspora" and nearly everyone is trapped in it. The video Asylum of the Dead was shot in a psychiatric hospital and has the artist in a bizarre performance, mimicking various stage props. The six boards on the sides that recall stage wings recycle photographs of production stills from Gunjai's play Postcard.
The work entitled Maquette uses the photographs of the same play as digital prints, linked together to form a scroll. Other works in the show (sculptures, videos and manipulated photographs) posit the object as the record and residue of a performance, inherently incomplete but also extending outside of themselves.
Gunaji died when Amol was quite young, and Amol draws on this and uses his art to familiarize himself with a lost parent. In this sense, Amol's art become a conscious effort to engage with a personal past, creating a discourse between private memories, personal narratives, loss, filial affection, and larger economic and cultural histories.
Based in Mumbai, Amol graduated from Rachna Sansad in 2009 with a Post Diploma in Fine Arts. He has had one solo exhibition at Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, titled Social Theatre in 2013, has done several public performances between 2008 and 2012, has been included in group shows such as INSERT 2014 at the Indira Gandhi Center for the Arts, New Delhi; Decolonising Imaginaries at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, 2013;We Have Arrived Nowhere, 2nd Transnational Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013; World Event Young Artists, Gallery Backlit, Nottingham, 2012; and I C U Jest, at Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2012. He received a Merit Scholarship for Outstanding Performance from the Gallery Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai in 2009 and has recently returned from a month's residency in Glasgow, organised by Alexia Holt.