Prabhakar Pachpute works in an array of mediums and materials including drawing, light, stop- motion animations, sound and sculptural forms. Pachpute often creates immersive and dramatic environments in his site-specific works, using portraiture and landscape with surrealist tropes to critically tackle 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 and personal experiences, moving from the personal to the global investigating a complexity of historical transformations on an economic, societal and environmental level.
Stolen Horizon, 2023
Acrylic paint, charcoal and graphite on the wall
Variable dimensions
New commission
The artist works with several elements he describes as The pillar of curiosity & The Lab, The Siren, and Feathers never die. The Lab, he tells us, ‘is an imaginative travelling creature which moves from one place to another. It keeps innovating without being held accountable for the consequences of its innovation. One wonders about its dark side. The Siren depicts a devious and amorphous creature ready for its flight. Armed with an excavator and carrying a symbol of alarm on its back, which gives a hint of precariousness. The flight might fulfil man’s greed, but could also devour the landscape and uncover the layers of buried history’. Feathers never die meanwhile tries to ‘reimagine restorations and repair. The wings which are growing in the pit are symbolic of hope and possible revolution or change. The fluid, a machine with a cape, and a gumboot filled with water are the characters that follow the feathers and create a dramatic atmosphere’