Sacrifice of the Banana, 2010/2012 by Karthik Pandian

Karthik Pandian
Sacrifice of the Banana, 2010/2012
Single-channel video with sound, 5:45 min loop
Edition of 3 with 2 artist proofs
Published by Triple Canopy

For more information, please write to jisu@canopycanopycanopy.com.

Karthik Pandian’s video, originally published as an interactive media piece in the magazine’s eighth issue, is an ecstatic bestiary, a prequel to 2012. Shot by the temple police. Performed for the video camera. A film.

Pandian’s practice seeks to unsettle the contradictions at the heart of the monument. The universal and contingent, sacred and profane, proximate and distant confront one another in his work. Concerned in particular with the way in which history lurks in matter, Pandian often uses 16mm film to excavate sites for fragments of political intensity. The sculptural works that support, enshroud and sometimes obscure his film projections are produced from materials drawn from his site research and assume the form of architectural constructions. Through moving image, sculpture and syntheses of the two, his work imagines freedom in relation to the impositions of architecture. For more on Pandian’s work, see “Gatefold Equinox,” an interview published by Triple Canopy.

Pandian has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and Vilma Gold, London among others. In 2012 his work was featured in the first Los Angeles Biennial at the Hammer Museum and La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo. In 2011 Pandian was the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.