Amol K Patil

Amol K Patil (b. 1987, Mumbai) is a conceptual and performance artist. His ongoing work of excavations and investigations aim to recapture the pulsating, vibrating movements and sound of ‘chawl’ architecture. Chawls are five-story structures specific to Mumbai that were built in the early 1900s and provided social housing for mill and factory workers. He is intellectually drawn to the shaping of social systems and taxonomies of memory. In his recent work, the artist is expanding his research on the constructs of urbanization and immanent invisibility of the working class in emergent urban imaginaries. His project is to build a counter-memory with contesting narratives that describe and disturb the relationship between humans and our landscapes. 


Initially a visual artist, Patil later became interested in the intersection of performance art, kinetic art, and video installation. After discovering his affinity for performance art, he grappled to understand his father’s work as a theatre activist. He encountered an old Dictaphone tape recorder, a Walkman, and cassettes filled with sounds and immigrant dialects that his father recorded for his avant-garde scripts on the dilemma of living in the city as a migrant. He also found handwritten songs by his poet grandfather. The songs are rooted in a protest tradition called powada, that dates back to the seventeenth century. Much like rappers, the interpreters furiously spit out words, often criticizing the caste system.


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