Important Notice

Born and raised in a priestly family in rural Orissa, Jagannath Panda currently lives and works in Gurgaon, one of the most rapidly expanding suburbs of India's capital, New Delhi. Drawing on his own migration and the disparities between his experiences of village life in Orissa and urban life in the political capital, Panda's body of work explores the implications of India's rampant development and urbanization on the environment and ecosystem,... Born and raised in a priestly family in rural Orissa, Jagannath Panda currently lives and works in Gurgaon, one of the most rapidly expanding suburbs of India's capital, New Delhi. Drawing on his own migration and the disparities between his experiences of village life in Orissa and urban life in the political capital, Panda's body of work explores the implications of India's rampant development and urbanization on the environment and ecosystem, a fragile structure whose perpetual existence he was used to taking for granted.

"Panda has steadily constructed a language of alienation that is contained paradoxically within images of settlement…In small or large format, he works through the positioning of opposites, of the enforcing of structures and the evacuation of life forms, of mythic cycles and contemporary time, of value and its imminent loss" (Gayatri Sinha, Recent Works by Jagannath Panda, Saffronart and Berkeley Square Gallery, London, 2006, unpaginated). Among the recurring subjects of Panda's large format works on canvas is the peacock, India's national bird and a traditional symbol of prosperity. The artist, however, uses the majestic bird not as an emblem of wealth and success, but as one of the uneasy sense of dislocation that his urban landscapes communicate. Here, Panda's peacock stands out against a backdrop of city rooftops, adorned with clothes and spices left to dry in the sun. Crested and proud, this bird has learnt to re-balance its bionetwork to accommodate the humans who have encroached upon and dramatically transformed its natural habitat. Humans, however, remain loathe to share the space and resources they have usurped in the name of national development, making Panda's use of the national bird doubly ironic.

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