Erased Faces
2015 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
29.7 x 35.9 cm each
Birender Kumar Yadav
Birender Kumar Yadav comes from Dhanbad, India, a city built on its proximity of iron ore and coal and once forested and inhabited by Indigenous people who compose the Gondwana. The forests were felled and immigrants from northern Bihar and South India were brought to exploit the mineral resources. The Indigenous people were then dispersed to live nomadically, engaging themselves as seasonal workers in farms and industries. These itinerant workers frequently move from one work camp to another, and lack basic identity documents to prove their existence. They come from the fringes of the state and neighboring regions that were once covered in forests, which have since been denuded through mining over the last century.. Indian modernism is often linked to the construction industry as an engine that would lift the country from the repressive societal conditions of caste and poverty. But the very industry on which this political utopia is based is entrenched in exploitation. While studying fine arts in Benaras to become a blacksmith like his father in the Dhanbad coalfields, Yadav encountered people from his hometown, albeit trafficked to work in brick kilns, recognizing them from the creole language they used to communicate with immigrant families such as Yadav’s. Yadav then changed his focus from blacksmithing to documenting the activities of the brick kilns and labor trafficking. Yadav found that Indigenous tribes from Dhanbad were being exploited by gangs that would gather them in groups and make them work in kilns, where bricks were produced by burning charcoal. Yadav began this project in 2015 when the Indian government started taking retina and biometric scans to create a unique identification number and card for citizens. The brick workers were left out of this identification process as they did not hold addresses, and their bondage was profitable to an industry sustained and subsidized by their lack of rights. For Erased Faces Yadav asked the workers to stamp their thumbprints onto passport-sized portraits. A thumbprint is a facsimile of identity in India, a country where 287 million illiterate people form a marginalized demography with regard to caste, livelihood, nutrition, health, and representation. The thumbprint serves as a signature for people unable to read the documents they consent to and sign. Yadav’s project uncovers the popular culture and living stories of the migrants, as a form of personal history writing of the subaltern lives that are often forgotten in India’s decolonial presence.
Birender Kumar Yadav is a multi-disciplinary artist who experiments with various media including painting, sculpture, photography, installation, etching, found and man-made objects, as well as live documentary. Influenced by his early experiences as the son of a blacksmith working in a coal mine, Yadav’s work often draws attention to issues of class hierarchies. Using gunpowder extracted from matchsticks as his primary medium, Yadav explores the complexities of class and identity while performing a commentary on power structures extant in contemporary socio-political structures. Yadav’s work further reflects on the complexity of language, labor, and migration as conceptual constructs in the personal stories that he has inhabited and encountered.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » ANOTHER
The West Hollywood Artist Who Immortalised LA’s Golden Boys | AnOther A new exhibition in New York showcases the work of Kenneth Kendall, an artist who sculpted James Dean, Marlon Brando and more in the bohemian atmosphere of late 20th-century Los Angeles February 06, 2024 Text Miss Rosen Back in the 1950s, Hollywood’s fabled Melrose Avenue was still a sleepy street home to cabinetmakers and print shops catering to the local community...
© » KADIST
Guadalupe Rosales
202290022 (Leonard Ave) by Guadalupe Rosales engages with memory, loss, grief, and nostalgia; themes that run throughout the artist’s practice...
© » SLASH PARIS
Martha Wilson — Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) — Frac Sud, Cité de l’art contemporain — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Martha Wilson — Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) — Frac Sud, Cité de l’art contemporain — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Martha Wilson — Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) Exhibition Photography Martha Wilson, Beastly + Beauty, 1974 et 2009 Photographies noir et blanc, texte, 43,2 × 59,7 cm, édition de 3 © DR Martha Wilson Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) Ends in 7 months: July 1, 2023 → February 4, 2024 The Frac Sud is pleased to present a major solo exhibition in France by Martha Wilson, a pioneering figure and guiding light of feminist engagement through art...
© » KADIST
Haig Aivazian
For the exhibition 1440 sunsets per 24 hours at KADIST Paris in 2017, Haig Aivazian presented a sprawling installation, which sought to enact various instances of the deployment of light and darkness within public space and sports, reflecting on the double-edged abilities of lighting systems to expose, highlight or dissimulate subjects...
© » KADIST
Zarouhie Abdalian
2010The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it...
© » KADIST
Ahmet Ögüt
2022Monuments of the Disclosed by Ahmet Ögüt is an NFT series of digital monuments to whistleblowers...
© » KADIST
Ahmet Ögüt
2022Monuments of the Disclosed by Ahmet Ögüt is an NFT series of digital monuments to whistleblowers...
© » KADIST
Amalia Pica
2013Memorial for intersections #2 (2013) is a minimalist, black metallic structure that contains the brightly colored translucent circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares that originally were presented in Pica’s performance work A ? B ? C (2013)...
© » KADIST
Ei Arakawa and Sergei Tcherepnin
2011Part of a series entitled “Looking at Listening”, 2011, the piece invited the spectator to experiment and consider sound as a kinetic and synesthetic process, where multiple experiences and senses can cross...
© » LE MONDE
Dans « Daaaaaalí ! », les inventions cinématographiques de Quentin Dupieux dignes du peintre surréaliste Cet article vous est offert Pour lire gratuitement cet article réservé aux abonnés, connectez-vous Se connecter Vous n'êtes pas inscrit sur Le Monde ? Inscrivez-vous gratuitement Article réservé aux abonnés Le peintre Salvador Dali (1904-1989), sur le toit de sa maison, à Cadaqués (Espagne), en septembre 1968...
© » KADIST
Emeka Okereke
2018Bariga Nights is a photographic series set in the Bariga neighborhood in Lagos (Nigeria)...
© » KADIST
Polina Kanis
2011In the seminal video Workout , Kanis looks at the phenomenon of exercise in public space—specifically aerobics exercises in parks around Moscow today—as a broader lens for thinking about generational change...
© » TATE EXHIBITIONS
Louise Bourgeois | The Burton at Bideford Explore the work of Louise Bourgeois, one of the most celebrated and influential figures in modern and contemporary art in Devon With a career spanning eight decades from the 1930s until 2010, Louise Bourgeois is one of the great figures of modern and contemporary art...
© » KADIST
Abigail Reyes
2016The video work Si Señor by Abigail Reyes is about the typical representation of women in Latin American office culture...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
International Women's Day: Inspiring Women | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles March 6, 2020 By ArtsEquator For International Women’s Day, ArtsEquator asked 11 women arts leaders in SEA to tell us about a woman who has inspired, supported or mentored them on their arts journey...
© » KADIST
Pablo Accinelli
2011In Onde quer que voce esteja (2011) Accinelli sets up a row of cardboard shipping tubes of varying heights and inscribes on them in black ink the words of the title, which translates in English as “Wherever you may be.” The words, while legible, seem like fragmented lines and shapes—almost but not quite a deconstruction of the text...