Hardeep Pandhal

Hardeep Pandhal makes hand-drawn cartoons, digital animations and multimedia installations. Adopting the language of so-called ‘gutter media’ – video games and comics – the artist employs fiction, colloquialism, wordplay and rap to confront, satirise and unravel the legacies of empire and colonialism and explore ‘syncretic strains of post-brown weirdness’. Much of Pandhal’s work stems from his Sikh heritage and personal experiences of everyday racism and entrenched, systematic modes of prejudice and discrimination. As the artist’s first language is English while his mother’s is Punjabi, he is interested in indirect verbal communications and the ways in which text can be interpreted. This is reflected in his use of rap and subtitled lyric videos – in which references from specific cultural contexts are not clear to the viewer or listener without further research – a method of self-expression that maintains ambiguity and opacity.