Amol K. Patil

Amol K Patil lives and works in Bombay, India.

He graduated from Rachna Sansad Academy of Fine Art in 2009.

Patil is a conceptual and performance artist. His work involves an ongoing attempt to recapture the vibrating movement and sound of the ‘chawl’ architecture in which he grew up, in a 5-storey social housing block for mill and factory workers in Bombay, built in the early 1900s; "...with many tenements close together and long verandahs connecting every door with children running on floorboards above, the gossiping voices from dimly-lit tables under which men gather to play carrom, the man with a walking stick, the sound of termites eating into wood, wedding festivities, and rhythmically creaking beds."

The ‘K’ inserted into his name is after Kisan Patil, the artist’s father whom he lost at a young age, and whom after discovering his own affinity for performance art he tries to know, beyond his father’s work as a civil engineer in Bombay’s Municipal Corporation, through the objects he found in old cupboards. An old dictaphone tape recorder, a walkman, and cassettes capture sounds and immigrant dialects his father must have recorded for his typed grassroots, avant-garde theatre; scripts about the dilemma of living as a migrant within the city, performed within the industrial mill areas of Bombay, as well as the found hand-written songs of his poet grandfather. The songs come from a protest tradition since the 17th century called ‘Powada’, much in use before and after Indian national independence, still found today, that not so much sung, but in rap form, spit out furious words, against the caste system, and the revolutionary spoken word histories of BR Ambedkar, the author of the Indian constitution, and the Dalit thinker who gave India roads out of caste and toward social equality.

Solo shows include Under Construction, ACC, Gwangju, Korea; *Black Boys Look Blue8, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, both 2017; Nature Morte, Delhi 2014, Social Theatre, Clark House Initiative Bombay, 2013.

He has participated in group shows at Pune Biennale, Habit-co Habit, 2017; New Galerie, Paris, 2016; Dakar Biennale, 2016; Myymälä2, Helsinki, 2015; Japan Foundation, Delhi, 2015; Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam 2014; International Artists Initiated, Glasgow, 2014; Video Art Festival, Lagos, 2014; Para Site, Hong Kong, 2014; Art Dubai Projects, 2014; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2013; and the Transnational Pavillion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013.

Amol K Patil's work is held in public collections at the Stedjlik Museum, Amsterdam; Angelo Zegna; Kadist Art Foundation, and
the Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Mauritius.

He has undertaken residencies at Below Another Sky, Highland Printmaking Studio, Scotland, 2014; and at Sandarbh, Silvasa, India, 2010.