Amol K Patil

Indian artist Amol K Patil (1987) lives and works in Mumbai, the city where he was born and raised. He spent his youth in what are known as chawls: simple workers’ housing from the colonial period, characterised by overcrowding, poverty and poor living conditions, but also by a strong sense of community. From this social context, Patil has developed a versatile and poetic oeuvre that includes sculptures, performances, drawings, videos and installations.

Social inequality and the Indian caste system are central themes in his work, particularly the position of the Dalits, the members of India’s lowest social classes. See Lines Between the City. They often do the dirtiest and most difficult jobs while remaining invisible to the rest of society. Patil gives them a voice and depicts their existence through sculptural reliefs and objects shaped like hands and feet – symbolising both labour itself and the reduction of human beings to mere sources of labour. By doing so, he exposes the power structures within society.

His work carries on a family tradition of artistic resistance. His grandfather wrote epic protest ballads – known as powadas – and his father created avant-garde stage productions about migration, discrimination and social inequality. This heritage is echoed in Patil’s own artistic practice, in which he uses archival material, poetry and sound collages to process his own family history and current themes in Indian society.

The sounds and textures of his childhood in the chawls are reflected in his installations as well. He uses architectural elements, light and sound to create layered environments that bring together individual memories and politics, in which forgotten communities are granted a visible place of their own.