Working in site-specific, large-scale drawing and sculpture, Prabhakar Pachpute explores ideas around industry, land and labour. Pachpute’s Artist’s Room at Jameel Arts Centre focuses on Indian farmers’ campaigns for land rights and survival, and how the farmers use their bodies in performative ways during the act of protesting. This installation is a continuation of ‘Sea of Fists’, a project that evolves and transforms with each iteration.

The figures in Pachpute’s work have experienced their land being donated, seized or acquired forcefully for economic gain. Hailing from a mining and farming family himself, the artist explores evolving histories of familial, emotional attachment and physical ownership of agricultural and industrial resources. How are individuals, communities and societies impacted when the economy evolves, policies change, and land-use transforms, or is even abandoned?

Drawn largely from the Art Jameel Collection, Artist’s Rooms is a series of solo exhibitions by influential, innovative artists, with particular focus on practitioners from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. These capsule shows are collaborative and curated in dialogue with the artist.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication that can be purchased from the Art Jameel Shop.

Prabhakar Pachpute (1986, born Sasti, Chandrapur) lives and works in Pune, India.

Prabhakar Pachpute works in an array of media and materials including drawing, light, stop-motion animation, sound and sculptural forms. His use of charcoal has a direct connection to his subject matter and familial roots: coal mines and coal miners. Pachpute often creates immersive and dramatic environments in his site-specific works, using portraiture and landscape with surrealist tropes to tackle, with a critical eye, issues of mining labour and the effects of mining on the natural and human landscape. Using Maharashtra as a starting point, the artist combines research from around the world with personal experiences, moving between the personal and the global while investigating historical transformation from economic, societal and environmental perspectives.

Pachpute received his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Indira Kala Sangit University, Khairagarh (Chhattisgarh, 2009) and his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Baroda (Gujrat, 2011). He has exhibited extensively with solo shows at: Clark House Initiative, Mumbai (2012); Experimenter, Kolkata (2013 and 2017); the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (2016); Asilo Via Porpora, Milan (2018); and the Glasgow School of Art (2019). He has also participated in group exhibitions at Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2013); Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2013); ifa (Institute für Auslandsbeziehungen), Stuttgart & Berlin (2013); DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation), London (2014); MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona), Barcelona (2015); Parasite, Hong Kong (2017); Asia Cultural Centre, Gwangju (2017); STUK, Leuven (2018); and AV Festival, Newcastle (2018). Pachpute was part of the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014); 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (2014); 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015); 8th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (2015); Dhaka Art Summit (2018); 2nd Yinchuan Biennale (2018); and the 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018). The artist is also a member of Shunya Collective.