Artist Meditates Upon Postcolonial Identity With Hybrid Paintings
“Fly in the second milk”
Over the three years that an art school attended, Mr. Patni He never learned how to draw his skin tone. White skin was naturally more brown than brown, and only his program began to ask about the reason. At this stage, the Australian artist laid the foundations for his creative practice, as he was heading towards post -colonial frameworks that could address his fears with diaspora and displacement sufficiently.
Today, Patney has become known for the paintings that move pictures of the empire, with “dismantling and re -forming” the aesthetic languages that depend on it. Most of the time, “dismantling” takes the form of the Mughal miniatures, a artistic tradition from South Asia, often characterized by flat coloring, characters, flowers, and epic decorations. Pattni miniatures may revolve around these stylistic elements, but they also include colonial characters that are stripped of their faces instead of being an identity talent. The range is striking: a vibrant and lavishly decorated circuit circle around the black voids in the midst of Patni’s paintings. Here, we do not see any effects of the empire, except for the small eyes that start from darkness.
“By addressing the visual infections of the empire, my work seeks to expose the joint tactics of control, classification and representation that supports colonial systems worldwide,” says Patni Met Met. “I hope my paintings are an invitation to think – how to build identity and dates.”
Regardless of colonial images, Patni also interrogates the legacy of British plant illustrations. In his paintings, the artist refers to these illustrations alongside the Mughal flowers to create complex flowers, all of which are “deliberate legendary”.
“This impossibility is symbolic of the methods that break colonialism, cultural originality, which creates irrevocable hybrid identities,” Patni explains. “By re -forming both floral languages, I create a visual metaphor for the winter identity.”
Met Met gave me the opportunity to speak with SID Pattni about his practice, post -colonial importance in his work, and the meaning behind the diaspora. Continue reading to conduct our exclusive interview with the artist.
“I am a borrowed legend”
What forced you first to draw as a technical means?
The painting drew me as a material space and a conceptual space. Technically, there is something in nature by touching and immediately about working with paint-layers, color use, transparency, and physical work to make marks. But from a conceptual point of view, the paint carries a heavy historical heritage. It was a tool for the empire and a means of resistance.
I had to do this tension – the ability to work within a broker historically contributed to the orientalists ’perceptions of India, while using it simultaneously to dismantle these same accounts.
“A borrowed legend”
“George the Great Day”
How did your practice evolve over the years?
My practice has turned from focusing on personal narration to become an interrogation of the wider historical frameworks. I explored the work of my family’s history and deporting it directly, but over time, I started seeing these stories present in larger colonial structures that not only formed my family’s movement but also my understanding of the identity. I have moved towards working with the current visual languages – the miniatures shown, the company’s paintings, and the British vegetable graphics – not as fixed effects but as a meaningful meaning sites. My work now focuses on dismantling these languages and re -configuration to explore how the colonial power continues to form the identity of the diaspora today.
“A third borrowed legend”
What originally attracted you to colonial history as an artistic framework?
The colonial history is not far from me – it is the architecture that supports my identity. My family’s migration from India to Kenya, then move to Australia, all of them sit in patterns of colonial displacement and global movement. This made me ask not only personal novels, but the structural conditions I produced.
Visually, it was attracted to the way the colonial dates were aesthetic: the eastern view of the British paintings of India, the indexing of vegetable illustrations, and the reduction of identity in the company’s plates. These were not neutral representations – they were tools for control. The use of colonial history as a framework allows me to engage critically with the same images that formed how Indians were seen – and the Indian diaspora people like me – and we have reached to see ourselves.
“I am a knot in the thread.”
“Fly in Milk”
What is the importance of Indian Mughal miniatures for you, and what techniques do you use to reproduce such elements?
Mughal miniatures represent a familiar and far visual language for me – the cultural inheritance formed by the empire and aesthetic by the West.
In my work, the Mughal miniatures as a whole work of historical artifacts and disorder sites. I borrow their synthetic structures, decorations, and perspectives, and they are often rebuilt through paint, textiles and other media to speak to the experience of contemporary diaspora.
“A knot in the second topic”
“The prince and his burden”
What inspired you first to integrate the Mongol flowers with British vegetable illustrations, and how does this work as a form of reclamation?
The flowers in the Mongol paintings symbolize a set of topics including heaven, abundance and cosmic system. When I disrupt it with British vegetable illustrations – imperial indexing products and classify them – I am the most prominent act of allocating in colonial sciences and beauty. These composite flowers in a deliberate legend work: cannot be found in nature.
This impossibility is a symbol of methods that break colonialism, cultural originality, which creates irrevocable identities that cannot be categorized accurately. By re -configuring both floral languages, I create a visual metaphor for the winter identity: something that is not completely original and not imposed completely, but a flexible compound.
“A knot in the third topic”
“Self -image (verb to restore everything together)”
How did you inform your experience as a member of the Indian diaspora in Australia?
As a migrant of Kenya’s first generation with Indian heritage, growth in Australia was constantly negotiating external perceptions and internal identity. There was a period in which he actively gone about the Hindi heritage in an attempt to absorb it.
My artistic practices are now an account with this denial and reclamation of what has been rejected once. By engaging with visual dates – comic panels, Mongol miniatures, colonial image – I can dissect how external novels formed this internal conflict. My work is mainly about re -authored the story of what it means to be Indian in the context of post -colonialism,
“A knot in the fourth topic”
“A well staring at the sky”
How does your artwork join a broader conversation about post -colonialism and the empire, especially in Australia?
In Australia, talks on colonialism often focus on British colonial history, especially with regard to indigenous Australians. My work is reflected in parallel colonial dates in other places – especially in India – and how it intersects with Australian multicultural novels. By addressing the optical infections of the empire, my work seeks to expose the common tactics of control, classification and representation that supports colonial systems worldwide.
Within the context of Australian art, it puts the Indian identity work in the diaspora within these conversations, which encourages viewers to think about how the empire’s wells continue not only in land ownership but also in cultural perceptions and personal identities.
“Everything that calms down the queen”
“Stole my identity and replace it with a legend.”
What do you hope that people will take from your art?
I hope that the practitioners of viewers encourage questioning the visual dates that they have absorbed unconsciously – to see colonial images not as a fixed historical record, but as active forces that form a contemporary identity. I want people to feel nervous in my work: between beauty, violence, vision, erasure, belonging and displacement.
In the end, I hope my paintings are an invitation to think – how to build identity and dates.
“Portia from Marika James”
Mr. Patni: Website | Instagram
Met Met has given permission to distribute photos by SID Pattni.
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