Pankaj Vishwakarma

Lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat, India

Artist statement

I belong to a migrant working class family from a rural village in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, now settled in the industrial town of Ankaleshwar, Gujarat. My artistic practice stems from these experiences of growing up as a migrant in a working class neighborhood. Often troubled about the dilemmas of my belongingness my works attempt to question the very elite narratives of the object hood of art. I use industrially produced mediums like carton box, enamel paints, wall paints, lights, and foils, to create my works which are though in the conventional formats of painting, prints and installations actually question these very disciplinary definitions of artwork. My works are also an interrogation into the question of how displacement and industrial landscape constantly shapes ones ideology and about belonging to a place, culture and identity. I am very interested in physicality of material which are part our daily social and cultural fabric. I am generally interested in the aesthetics of abstraction which happen through crisis, failure, assimilation and erasure. They are everywhere on our walls, doors, windows and furniture. My art is a practice that imbibes its social engagement and politics in its production rather than in its figurative depiction.

Artwork