Hardeep Pandhal & Jagdeep Raina: You Migrate, We Migrate, You Displace, We Displace
Hardeep Pandhal and Jagdeep Raina are both artists who persistently return to the theme of reinvention, whether of cultural tradition, identity, or historical memory. Their approaches are, however, counterpoints to each other: while Pandhal鈥檚 work revels in the Dionysian and carnivalesque dream logic of racial history, Raina鈥檚 work represents a painstaking project of retrieval and reflection. A sense of dangerous play sets the tone for Pandhal鈥檚 work, while Jagdeep鈥檚 artwork plumbs the productive capacities of melancholia, lending his works an aura of sober commemoration. Both artists share an interest in the problem of historical repetition, as traumatic symptom and also as reactivation of the past鈥檚 unrealized potentials.
Hardeep Pandhal works across a variety of media with a playful sensibility that nevertheless engages deadly serious topics such as racial violence, minoritization, and the haunting of cultural traditions. In the simultaneously light-hearted and terrifying worlds depicted in Pandhal鈥檚 work, empire has ended but the libidinal鈥攅ven orgiastic鈥攅nergies upon which it depended have not dissipated. The past keeps returning, distorted in light of the collective desires of the present. Consider the description of the 1980s television series, Jewel in the Crown, as heard in Pandhal鈥檚 2020 animation piece Ensorcelled English: 鈥淏asically there鈥檚 an interracial couple鈥揳n Indian man and white woman鈥搘ho get attacked by local Indians whilst making love outdoors. The man gets thrown into prison and is raped himself by a colonial officer. The woman dies in childbirth鈥� Everything happens in the first couple of episodes. Hardly anything happens in the remaining ones, it鈥檚 weird.鈥� This narration suggests that the excessive elements of Jewel in the Crown were not only the lush and glittery surfaces on which the camera lingered, but a narrative element underlying this fetishistic experience of orientalism is sex rendered gothic in its violent excess. Yet the speaker describes this lurid aspect in the deadest of deadpan voices. Her voice lends irony to the description, and such irony has the effect of highlighting the preposterous nature of Raj-nostalgia fantasies but without detracting from the horror of racial terror upon while empire depended, and which is now revealed as the true longing underwriting the nostalgia for empire.
Recommended for you
Hardeep Pandhal and Jagdeep Raina are both artists who persistently return to the theme of reinvention, whether of cultural tradition, identity, or historical memory. Their approaches are, however, counterpoints to each other: while Pandhal鈥檚 work revels in the Dionysian and carnivalesque dream logic of racial history, Raina鈥檚 work represents a painstaking project of retrieval and reflection. A sense of dangerous play sets the tone for Pandhal鈥檚 work, while Jagdeep鈥檚 artwork plumbs the productive capacities of melancholia, lending his works an aura of sober commemoration. Both artists share an interest in the problem of historical repetition, as traumatic symptom and also as reactivation of the past鈥檚 unrealized potentials.
Hardeep Pandhal works across a variety of media with a playful sensibility that nevertheless engages deadly serious topics such as racial violence, minoritization, and the haunting of cultural traditions. In the simultaneously light-hearted and terrifying worlds depicted in Pandhal鈥檚 work, empire has ended but the libidinal鈥攅ven orgiastic鈥攅nergies upon which it depended have not dissipated. The past keeps returning, distorted in light of the collective desires of the present. Consider the description of the 1980s television series, Jewel in the Crown, as heard in Pandhal鈥檚 2020 animation piece Ensorcelled English: 鈥淏asically there鈥檚 an interracial couple鈥揳n Indian man and white woman鈥搘ho get attacked by local Indians whilst making love outdoors. The man gets thrown into prison and is raped himself by a colonial officer. The woman dies in childbirth鈥� Everything happens in the first couple of episodes. Hardly anything happens in the remaining ones, it鈥檚 weird.鈥� This narration suggests that the excessive elements of Jewel in the Crown were not only the lush and glittery surfaces on which the camera lingered, but a narrative element underlying this fetishistic experience of orientalism is sex rendered gothic in its violent excess. Yet the speaker describes this lurid aspect in the deadest of deadpan voices. Her voice lends irony to the description, and such irony has the effect of highlighting the preposterous nature of Raj-nostalgia fantasies but without detracting from the horror of racial terror upon while empire depended, and which is now revealed as the true longing underwriting the nostalgia for empire.
Artists on show
Contact details
What's on nearby
