Jagannath Panda

Born 1970 in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India Lives and works in New Delhi, India Jagannath Panda holds two masters’ degrees in Sculpture, one from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda, 1994, and a later degree from the Royal College of Art, London, 2002. Panda is known for creating images that are deceptively simple. Often, his works consist of light, linear drawings and melting or liquid shapes placed on the surface. At the same time, the works also reflect conflicts between ecology and development, nature and technology. Panda’s works are often inspired by his immediate surroundings: Orissa, his native state, and his current home in chaotically urban New Delhi. For example, he mixes the traditional palm leaf drawings of Orissa with architectural motifs showing multinational enterprises and call centres from New Delhi. In so doing, the artist illustrates the paradoxical co-existence of different worlds while also highlighting how the success of the business community is creating palpable change within Indian society. Through his art, Panda brings together many binary opposites, juxtaposing nature and culture, the urban and the rural, tradition and innovation, and the figurative and the abstract. In his works he brings together these opposing scenarios to form a coherent whole through deft colour treatment and a personal aesthetic sensibility. Animal life also plays an important part in the artist’s circle of motifs. Animals represent people, gods, or the cycle of life. The work God and Goat from 2007 casts a goat as the main protagonist. The goat is a symbol for sacrifices to the gods, but in some cases it can also be an avatar of the god Prakriti. In Hinduism, Prakriti represents Mother Nature, and it may be in order to accentuate this symbolism that Panda has an umbilical cord, terminating in a red cloth ball, emanate from the goat’s belly. The goat is also decked out in a range of patterns reminiscent of embroidery and painted in the colours red, black, and white. These colours can represent the three spiritual qualities: ’Sattva’, goodness and happiness; 'Rajaher’, passion and movement; and finally ’Tamas’: darkness and ignorance. Panda’s staging of the goat reclining on a pewter box is a testament to an enchanted universe where modern-day rationality locks horns with religion and fantasy. India’s contrasts between past and present are powerfully expressed in the artist’s work. Stine Kleis Hansen

Jagannath Panda God and Goat, 2007