Prabhakar Pachpute
Dark Clouds of the Future
Dark Clouds Of The Future is a cinematographic video animation of the abandoned gold mine in Brazil, Serra Pelada (“Naked Mountain”). Thought to be one of the largest mines in the world, made famous by photographers Alfredo Jaar, and later by Sebastião Salgado, the hand-dug mine is now a mercury-polluted lake. During his research trip to Brazil, Prabhakar Pachpute met many former gold diggers who used to work at Serra Pelada, inciting his interest in the concept of the witness. The motif of the eye in Dark Clouds Of The Future is a reference to witnessing and participating in the environmental destruction brought about by industrialization. The perpetual movement and transformation in Pachpute’s landscape suggests the continuous erasure of the natural environment, provoking fears and questions for the future articulated in the ominous clouds casting shadows across the mountain. The repetitiveness of the medium, the strokes of coal and pencil on paper, brought to life, as a cinemagraph is a sophisticated examination of the irreversible consequences for nature and man. Dark Clouds Of The Future puts into question the autonomy of the individual in the face of a global community whose actions devastate the natural environment.
Prabhakar Pachpute calls attention to issues concerning land politics, industry, and labor through a multimedia practice that includes drawing, painting, sculpture, animation, and murals. Best known for his site-specific charcoal wall drawings, Pachpute’s work references his own experiences growing up in a multi-generational coal mining and farming family. Employing surrealist motifs, the artist’s works are politically rooted depictions of characters that have experienced the seizure or ‘donation’ of their land for economic gain. Considering issues of exploitation through economic, social, and environmental lenses, the artist’s work critically reflects on evolving histories of familial attachment and physical ownership of agricultural and industrial resources.