Prabhakar Pachpute (Experimenter, Stand A4)
b. 1986, Sasti, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India; lives and works in Pune, India
b. 1986, Sasti, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India; lives and works in Pune, India
Presenting at Frieze London 2022 as part of Indra's Net, curated by Sandhini Poddar
Prabhakar Pachpute’s artistic universe is inhabited by a surreal cast of characters and creatures, which recur and migrate across his paintings, sculptures and site-specific murals. Pachpute thinks of them fondly as “motifs” or “travellers” that are either stand-alone in nature, or else appear combined in narratives to change their agency or subject matter.
In The Anthills, 2020 and Asylum Seeker, 2020, we see the artist’s trademark use of cut-out shapes and charcoal – a material with both political and familial weight, given his family’s background in coal mining in Maharashtra, India. Alongside mining communities, Pachpute is also very concerned about the country’s farmers, thousands of whom protested in 2020-21 outside New Delhi; many dying from the heat, cold, or Covid-19. Ongoing farmer suicides are endemic in India. For the artist, the bull’s head is a plough; it represents rage and grim determination in the face of displacement, strife and loss.
Main image: Courtesy of the Artist and Experimenter
