related event within the exhibition "Black Masks on Roller Skates"
Currently on view at Project 88, Black Masks on Roller Skates, is a selected excerpt of Amol Patil’s larger project exhibited at Documenta Fifteen. This exhibition encompasses kinetic sculpture, holographic video, music, and performance. Map-lines of migration and transformation outline a stage, with performers as if beneath the surface. They are breathing, watching the land, living, moving. It’s a wave movement, between places. The exhibition is on view till April 29.
“I vibrate with a legacy,” Patil says. There’s an insurrectionary history that the artist comes from. In this exhibition, he reawakens it. Patil builds on theatre and performative traditions nested in working-class neighbourhoods in Mumbai, as well as his own family history. His grandfather was an anti-colonial Powada performer who mixed his critique of empire with that of a violence embedded in the graded inequality of the caste system that hierarchically divides not just labour but labourers. His father, an avant-garde writer, wrote and produced protest theatre, critiqued the time of the work siren, and of sleeping in shifts, intensified this experimental, emancipatory ethos. In his father’s scripts are comma sections, with gestures and moods. Patil access these clues, this other body language.
On March 30, 6 pm – Patil in collaboration with the Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch will present a ‘Powada’ performance at Project 88.
‘Powada’, a musical performance of traveling troupes, can be traced to the thirteenth century where, in kings’ courts, poets composed songs praising gods. In Maharashtra over the last century, the Dalit move-ment turned this devotional bias into a radical idiom to reimagine society with equality and new ideas of fraternity. A tumult of revolutionary lyrics provokes a reconstitution of publics and arenas. Many, from different cultures, backgrounds, suddenly together, in chawls, made adjustable stages, performed, and re-hearsed. Patil invites a time collaboration. Young Powada writers and musicians, the Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch, weave their lyrics with his grandfather’s. It’s a way to think the now, combining what’s harsh and polite, sweet and silent, pitching a criticism of land politics and social separation.
Black Masks on Roller Skates is supported by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai
Powada Performance is supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai
Don't forget to see the exhibition!
About:
Amol K Patil (b. 1987) is a conceptual and performance artist based in Mumbai. After his education in the visual arts from Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts, Mumbai, his work has explored the intersection of performance art, theatre, music, kinetic art and video installation. He has initiated and has been part of several collective practices and has participated in exhibitions around the world since 2013.
Patil’s work excavates and investigates family traditions: his grandfather was an interpreter and a poet (Powada Shahir, a troubadour telling epic stories as he went from one village to another); and his father was an avant-garde playwright who addressed issues such as the devastating effects of immigration and its traumas through absurd situations in his plays. Patil, and before him, his family, has considered art as a method of resistance. In his recent work, he has been researching the processes of urbanization and invisibility of the working class in urban imaginaries. His projects build counter-memory and contesting narratives that describe and disturb the relationship between communities and their environments.
Patil’s works have been shown at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi (2022- 2023), Documenta fifteen, Kassel (2022), Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama 2020), Goethe- Institute / Max Mueller Bhavan, Delhi (2019), The Showroom, London (2018), Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2017), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), Pune Biennale Habit-co Habit, Pune, (2017), Dakar Biennale, Dakar (2016), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015), ParaSite, Hong Kong (2014), and Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2013).
Yalgaar Sanskrutik Kala Manch is a collective which initiates and motivates the cultural movement in rural and suburban areas in Maharashtra. This platform makes strategic endeavours to recreate the spirit of movements and create a voice for the voiceless group of the society. This platform creates awareness about the marginal sectors in society and promotes youth to create performances and research papers in a context of Art, Politics and Social movements. This is conducive in creating considerable awareness among the new generation in terms of its practicality and shall also be helpful in academic discipline.
Main purpose of this group is to bring diverse artists and cultural activists on one single platform and thereby strengthening the ongoing cultural activism on political and social issues. This platform also aims to conduct festivals on national and international level with the motive to engage participants from all around the world and also encourage new artists to bring their art on the world perspective. This platform conducts online as well as offline performances. We had an interview with Yalgaar performers and documented a few songs in other events.
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