The Hayward Gallery, the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation and the Kochi Biennale Foundation announce artist Amol K Patil as the first recipient of the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation/Kochi-Muziris Biennale (DBF-KMB) Award, a multi-year exhibition and lecture programme spotlighting emerging South Asian artists.
Patil was selected on the strength of his installation The Politics of Skin and Movement which was presented at the fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Patil will present his first institutional solo exhibition in the UK at the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space from 9th October to 19th November 2023 as a result of winning the award.
For the exhibition, Patil will create a new iteration of his ambitious and meditative work from the Biennale, consisting of a constellation of drawings, sculptures, kinetic objects and moving images. The Politics of Skin and Movement questions conditions of labour, casteism and the body. It also touches upon the larger issue of both real and imaginary borders about access and movement for Patil’s community across time and history. The installation further draws upon Patil’s family archives and the legacy of his grandfather, a poet, and his father, an avant-garde playwright.
The exhibition marks the reopening of the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space, which has presented free exhibitions from a wide-ranging group of innovative international artists since 2007. Previous artists who have exhibited in the space include Hicham Berrada, Kate Cooper, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Victor Mann.
I am delighted to be selected for the first Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation/Kochi-Muziris Biennale Award and very much look forward to showing my work at the Hayward Gallery. The installation looks like a disjointed sequence of still images, but when you get closer, there are subtle movements. These movements are like meditations on the body’s senses; touch, sound, breathing, and other working processes, engaging with ideas of touch and skin politics.
Amol K Patil
About
About Amol K Patil
Amol K Patil is a visual artist based in Mumbai and Amsterdam. Currently a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Patil has obtained a diploma and a post-diploma from Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts in Mumbai.
He has participated in a large number of group exhibitions worldwide since 2015 as well as solo shows in India, the United States and Korea, including Documenta 15 (2022), Yokohama Triennale 2020 and the 12th Biennale de Dakar (2016). Coming from a family of artists – with his grandfather being a poet and his father an Avant-garde playwright, Patil has been working with drawings, objects, video, and performance with his own family archives. Patil’s work questions the current situation of workers and casteism, striving to connect the past, present and future. He is interested in the reality of the community he is from, and working with the urban and human environment that surrounds him.
About the Award
The DBF-KMB Award is a new, multi-year exhibition and lecture programme that brings together the Hayward Gallery, the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation and the Kochi Biennale Foundation. It grants an emerging South Asian artist participating in the biennale the opportunity to present their first institutional solo show in the UK at Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space.
The DBF-KMB Award has been created with the aim of supporting the artist at a crucial juncture in their professional development while creating a new pathway for cultural exchange between South Asia, the UK and Europe. The recipient of the Award will be selected by the DBF-KMB Award selection committee, including members of the Hayward Gallery’s curatorial team and its Director, Ralph Rugoff, as well as representatives from the DBF and the Kochi Biennale Foundation. Artists shortlisted for the DBF-KMB Award will originate from a South Asian country (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and will not have had any prior solo exhibitions in UK’s public institutions.
Every alternate year and between biennales, the Hayward Gallery will also host a public programme titled “The Durjoy Bangladesh Lecture Series.” Co-curated with the Kochi Biennale Foundation, these talks will draw on the Biennale’s legacy by featuring leading artist-curators and creative practitioners from the South Asian region. Exploring salient artistic concerns of the present, the Durjoy Bangladesh Lecture Series will serve to further build the Hayward Gallery’s critical and research-driven engagement with exhibition-making practices in South Asia, and in particular with the progressive and cosmopolitan approach formulated by the KMB, which has established itself as a centre for artistic engagement in India by drawing from the rich tradition of public action and engagement in Kerala, as well as aesthetic interventions that have subverted notions of social and cultural hierarchies.
About the HENI Project Space
Since opening in 2007, the HENI Project Space at the Hayward Gallery has presented free exhibitions from a wide-ranging group of innovative international artists, including many UK premieres. Over the past 15 years, the HENI Project Space has served as a crucial portal of cross-cultural connection, featuring artists from five continents and over 40 different countries.
About the Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery, part of the Southbank Centre, has a long history of presenting work by the world’s most adventurous and innovative artists including major solo shows by both emerging and established artists and dynamic group exhibitions. Opened by Queen Elizabeth II in July 1968, the gallery is one of the few remaining buildings of its style. The Brutalist building was designed by a group of young architects, including Dennis Crompton, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron and is named after Sir Isaac Hayward, a former leader of the London County Council.
About the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation
The Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF) is a non-profit organisation established in 2018, with a mission to support and promote art from South Asia and beyond in a critical, international art context. Its projects and programming cultivate and present rigorous artistic and socially responsible practices through exhibitions, commissions, residencies, community engagement programmes and publications, with the aim of developing new dialogues, narratives and interconnections between home-based and diaspora South Asian artists and the international cultural community. These goals are strengthened by fruitful synergies with cross-platform cultural Partners globally, including educational and governmental institutions, museums, foundations and non-profits, art fairs and art festivals, community platforms and charities.
About the Kochi Biennale Foundation
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an international exhibition of contemporary art being held in Kochi, Kerala every two years. The first edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale began on 12/12/12 and was set in spaces across Kochi, Muziris and surrounding islands.
Through the celebration of contemporary art from around the world, The Kochi-Muziris Biennale seeks to invoke the historic cosmopolitan legacy of the modern metropolis of Kochi, and its mythical predecessor, the ancient port of Muziris. Alongside the exhibition the Biennale offers a rich programme of talks, seminars, screenings, music performances, workshops and educational activities for school children and visitors of all ages.
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- the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation and the Kochi Biennale Foundation announce artist Amol K Patil as the first recipient of the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation/Kochi-Muziris Biennale (DBF-KMB) Award
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