Prabhakar Pachpute
Flies Never Infest an Egg Without Cracks
Prabhakar Pachpute’s work Flies Never Infest an Egg Without Cracks is a 5-meter-long painting depicting a bleak and unearthly desert-scape, seemingly uninhabitable but populated by swarm of faceless beings, part human part machine. A part of a wider series that considers land transformation and how it affects society on a global scale, the work interrogates the complex history of displacement and exploitation as a result of mass industrialization. Through a surreal illustration of the plight of the rural farmer, miner, cotton mill-worker, and landless laborer, Pachpute reveals the history of modernity from a geological, societal and political perspective.
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.