Amol Patil is a conceptual and performance artist based in Mumbai. After his education in the visual arts from Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts, Mumbai, his work has explored the intersection of performance art, theatre, music, kinetic art, and video installation. He has initiated and has been part of several collective practices and has participated in exhibitions around the world since 2013. Patil is currently the artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and is the recipient of the inaugural DBF-KMB Award, which culminated with his first institutional solo in the UK, ‘The Politics of Skin and Movement’ at Hayward Gallery, London, 2023. This project was supported by the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation in collaboration with the Kochi Biennale Foundation.
Patil’s work excavates and investigates family traditions: his grandfather was an interpreter and a poet (Powada Shahir, a troubadour telling epic stories as he went from one village to another); and his father was an avant-garde playwright who addressed issues such as the devastating effects of immigration and its traumas through absurd situations in his plays. Patil, and before him, his family, has considered art as a method of resistance. In his recent work, he has been researching the processes of urbanization and invisibility of the working class in urban imaginaries. His projects build counter-memory and contesting narratives that describe and disturb the relationship between communities and their environments.
Patil’s works have been shown at Project 88 Mumbai (2023), the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi (2022- 2023), Documenta fifteen, Kassel (2022), Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama 2020), Goethe- Institute / Max Mueller Bhavan, Delhi (2019), The Showroom, London (2018), Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2017), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), Pune Biennale Habit-co Habit, Pune, (2017), Dakar Biennale, Dakar (2016), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015), ParaSite, Hong Kong (2014), and Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2013).