American artist Karthik Pandian makes works in moving image, sculpture and performance. Questions of history, consciousness, and the built environment motivate his research into subjects ranging from pre-Columbian mound-building cultures, race and the aesthetics of the avant-garde and camel choreography as an analogy for political movement. Pandian’s process is defined by a particular approach to vision: how to recognise the play of time, labor, and meaning in artifacts, landscapes and people. He works with a broad range of materials – from video, 35mm slide and 16mm film to earth, wood, and bronze – to render that play more visible.

Pandian had held solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Bétonsalon, Paris, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, and White Flag Projects, St. Louis, amongst others. His work was featured in the inaugural Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum and La Triennale: Intense Proximity at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris as well as in group exhibitions such as Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915-2015, at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Film as Sculpture at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and the 4th Marrakech Biennial, Higher Atlas. Pandian joined the faculty of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University in the Fall of 2017.