Sid Pattni's Multimedia Art Captures The Diasporic Struggle To Find A Sense Of Belonging

Never before has Indian design and South Asian identity been as represented and discussed as they are today. When I first saw the paintings by Perth-based, Indian-origin artist Sid Pattni, I was struck by gilded, clichéd Indian motifs of lotuses enclosing dark, faceless human figures clad in recognizably colonial garb. The artwork series ‘A Knot in The Thread’ made me feel a knot in the pit of my stomach, and brought up a question: In a world where we are immersed in information, influences and imagery that go far beyond our roots, are we starting to lose sight of our identity? And if you’re diasporic, how does one truly find a place for belonging? How do you hold onto your identity in a way that isn’t exoticised? 

To perhaps find answers to these questions, I went looking to learn more about the artist. Sid Pattni is an Indian-Australian artist whose work delves into the intricacies of identity, culture, and belonging within a post-colonial context. Born in London in 1986, he spent part of his childhood in Kenya and currently resides in Western Australia. Pattni's artistic practice primarily involves painting and embroidery, through which he explores his cultural heritage. Through this work, he has significantly contributed to the ongoing discourse surrounding art and its role in communicating the complexities of diasporic identity.

In 2023, Pattni was awarded the Kennedy Prize, a prestigious Australian art award. His work has been selected for numerous national prizes, including the Lester Prize, Blake Prize, and Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize. In 2022, he received the Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund Grant and was invited to speak at TEDx about his practice. One of Pattni's earlier notable projects is 'The Story of Us', an exhibition that featured mixed-media portraits of refugees and asylum seekers. For this project, he sat with each subject, spending hours listening to their stories, which he then translated into his artwork. The artwork was detailed with paint and thread details, adding an extra layer to his work. 

Pattni's latest series that got my brain turning. 'A Knot in the Thread', which comprises three oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, explores the complexities of identity, particularly within diasporic communities, and examines how these identities are influenced by Orientalist and colonial histories.

The first painting in the series depicts Robert Clive, a British officer known for his role in colonising India. The artwork critiques the 'Company Paintings' commissioned during Clive's era, which modified traditional Indian miniature art to cater to Western tastes, leading to a hybrid visual language that often propagated reductive views of India. Pattni's painting confronts these binary projections of identity, highlighting the cultural 'forgetting' that occurred and its impact on both external perceptions of India and internalized notions of 'Indian-ness'.

The second painting continues this exploration, further delving into the themes of identity and cultural distortion resulting from colonial influences. It portrays James Skinner, a British East India officer of Scottish-Indian heritage, who straddled a paradox of loyalty to both colonial authority and Indian culture. Like Clive, his actions also contributed to distorting the visual narrative that shaped both external perceptions of India and the artist personally commented in his artist's note about how these images made generations of Indians like him internalise and inhabit Western projections of 'Indian-ness'.

The third painting portrays Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of British India. Hastings' approach to governance involved translating key Hindu and Islamic texts into English, ostensibly to respect local traditions. However, these translations were often selective, simplifying complex traditions into codes that served British interests. Pattni's artwork reflects this duality and the uneasy blending of Indian traditions with British colonial authority, drawing parallels to the diasporic experience of navigating multiple cultural identities.

Through 'A Knot in the Thread', Sid Pattni continues to engage with themes central to his practice, offering a nuanced critique of historical and contemporary constructions of identity within post-colonial and diasporic contexts. He especially comments on how the orientalist visual language that many diasporic South Asians have come to identify as their own, is often one that, “...inevitably categorises one group as lesser than the other and completely overlooks the various third spaces of coexistence,” and notes that this skewed understanding of one’s own identity evokes “a feeling of being ‘in-between’, not fully accepted by either their host country or their ancestral culture.” 

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