Hardeep Pandhal: Inheritance Quest

Hardeep Pandhal: Inheritance Quest is the first monograph on Hardeep Pandhal, whose practice concerns the unsettling and transformative forces of migration, historical violence and cultural assimilation. Including images of the artist’s key works and QR links to view key videos online, this book offers multiple ways into his complex, multi-layered practice. 

The Glasgow-based artist works with an unusual fluency across various media, including rap, animations, embroidered jumpers knitted by his mum, sensitively rendered drawings of unsettling characters, airbrush paintings and installations. These works reference genres across a vast landscape of popular culture, from video games to cartoons, and from fantasy lore and mystical poetry to gothic horror and steampunk. 

In this book, Pandhal builds a luridly rendered world where the ghosts of empire slink alongside narratives of Tolkienesque fantasy; where game designer Hideo Kojima’s Solid Snake shares a backseat with an Uber Eats bag; and where personal memories of racist invective are untwisted into sinuous renderings of the headless figures of Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh, or tottering troops of British-Indian sepoys. 

Beneath the surface of his visually seductive yet often disturbing imagery lies a lyrical ambition and allusive power that is literary in quality. Whether exploring the libidinal and orgiastic energies of empire, or the fantastical elements of his practice, Pandhal adeptly riffs on the immigrant experience in modern Britain. From the sung poems of the 15th-century South Asian mystic poet Kabir to Pandhal’s affinities and difficulties with contemporary fantasy – and that genre’s uncomfortable relationship with whiteness – this is an eclectic and erudite exposition of the relationship between race, place and art.

Hardeep Pandhal: Inheritance Quest is commissioned by Anita Dawood. It includes critical texts by four writers: Zahid Chaudhary, Gabrielle de la Puente, Hammad Nasar and Jamie Sutcliffe. It also includes a conversation with artist and academic David Steans.

Zahid R. Chaudhary is Associate Professor of English at Princeton University, specialising in postcolonial studies, visual culture, and critical theory. He has published widely on contemporary art, film and cultural politics.

Gabrielle de la Puente is a writer from, and based in, Liverpool. She co-runs The White Pube, where she publishes criticism on art, video games and the wider creative industries. She is Director and Curator at OUTPUT gallery, where she platforms artists exclusively from or based in the Liverpool City Region.

Hammad Nasar is a curator, writer and strategic advisor. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, part of Yale University. Recent curatorial projects have included Divided Selves: Legacies, Memories, Belonging (2023), British Art Show 9 (2021-22) and the Turner Prize 2021 exhibition. He was awarded an MBE for services to the arts in 2023.

David Steans is Postgraduate Course Leader on Leeds Art University’s MA Fine Art course. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a practising artist. Recent projects include Mummy Hood Nesting Forest(2022), Puppy the Goblin (2020), screened at Tate Britain in 2022, and Curtainz (2021), published in Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic (Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press).