“When I walk slowly across the floor of the studio, I step with my ancestors. I step with outcastes, migrants and refugees. I step with artists, dancers and pilgrims. My foot trembles, unaccustomed to this labor. It is painted, made up in the guise of a sculpture. I step into Tamil Man, into the vision of Malvina Hoffman, who put her self-proclaimed capacity to see and identify true racial types to work in her monumental commission of the Hall of the Races of Mankind at the Field Museum of Chicago in the 1930s. I step out of the museum, out of the studio and into a pose as a living sculpture. On the banks of the river, I perform austerities. Trembling, I die and give birth to myself, every 29.97th of a second.”
Karthik Pandian
Installation view
Artworks displayed
Opulent Austerity (for my caste and my makeup artist)
2018
inkjet print on silk
140 × 140 cm
Opulent Austerity (for Mamayya and Malvina)
2018
inkjet print on silk
140 × 140 cm
Opulent Austerity (for meditation amidst serpents)
2018
inkjet print on silk
Opulent Austerity (for myself)
2018
inkjet print on silk
140 × 140 cm
Corpse Pose (variation)
2018
gouache, ballpoint pen and laser jet on paper, wood frame
32 × 38 × 3 cm
Boat Pose
2018
gouache, ballpoint pen and laser jet on paper, wood frame
32 × 38 × 3 cm
Flesh (Threshold Pink)
2018
latex print on canvas from 4 x 5 negative with pigment on hand dyed muslin
fabric: 254 x 270 cm; canvas: 280 x 150 cm
Platform (for economic and literal levitation)
2018
stainless steel and fabric
170 × 76 × 59 cm
Tamil Man
2018
Two-channel HD 9:16 video on 65” Flatscreen
(8 min, 88 sec)
9:16 65” flatscreen; runtime 8 minutes 88 seconds
