Born in Birmingham (1985) to Indian migrants and now living and working in Glasgow, Pandhal uses wall drawings, small and large-scale drawings on paper and animations to create mythical narratives that explore the complexities of contemporary culture, class, power and racial violence. Pandhal’s drawings present his own worldbuilding fragments that combine the recognisable with the abstract, inviting viewers to explore and piece together in an open-ended way. His works draws upon an ambitious range of sources – religion, video games, comics, mainstream music – from the Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh to black metal. In these visions, Pandhal is striving for cultural interdependence, whilst exploring the transformative forces of migration, colonialism and cultural assimilation.
Using a mix of dip pen, Indian ink, brush and airbrushing, the works on show are populated by recurring figurative forms and mark-making gestures. Wryly poking at the narratives of sword and sorcery fiction and role-playing-games from Earthsea to Dungeons and Dragons, these gothic grotesques appear unable to escape the existential dread of their surroundings. Named after a fake family name associated with his childhood, ‘Pintoo’, which was adopted when addressing strangers, Pandhal is building a personal world that he calls the ‘Pintooverse’, one that reveals the fragility of cultural identity, as well as the desire for self-definition, at a moment in global politics when such complexities are increasingly oversimplified and weaponised.
