Sort of joyful but mostly terrifying, this image is taken from the installation Self-Loathing Flashmob by Birmingham-born, Glasgow-based artist Hardeep Pandal. The artist works with video, crudely drawn cartoon-like imagery, sculpture and sound to create pieces that often draw on his background as a second generation British Sikh. His work typically explores post-colonial trauma and identity using a bleak, strange sort of humour. “By representing the past, albeit in often far-fetched or whimsical ways, my intention is to playfully evoke a sense of anachronism,” says Pandal, “the act of attributing something to a period to which it does not belong—as a way of writing back or confronting the past.” Pandal’s solo show, Paranoid Picnic: The Phantom BAME, runs from 19 January to 17 March 2019 at two sites in Nottingham: New Art Exchange (NAE) and Primary.
