Report by OD bureau; New Delhi: History records and explains past events, while folklore preserves what people widely remember. But New Delhi based internationally renowned Odia artist Birendra Pani tried his best to preserver and popularize both rich history and great cultural tradtion of Odisha through his art work.

Pani said to Odishadiary that, "Our great Odia identity and character emanate from its cultural roots laid down in the mists of time, and which have to be nursed through generations despite the global transition to modern living styles."

Pani participated in several national and international exhibitions. In these exhibitions he presented his art works over Odisha's rich legacy of diverse visual culture and sensibility. The intentionality of the Pani is the creation of a personal iconography by negotiating with the contingent spheres of influences in the global-local conundrum and the cultural negligence of Odishan art by engaging with tradition in an innovative way.

Birendra Pani’s exhibition “Re-Vision” is a continuation of his engagement with the once popular and now endangered traditional dance form called Gotipua dance and the past cultural tradition of Odisha in a broader sense.

Gotipua dance form which is performed by the boys in the guise of girls, has its own language, rhetoric and symbols and a living experience through the fabric of social life. Odisha has a rich legacy of diverse visual culture and sensibility with vast history of stone carving and monumental feeling which
have been neglected and abandoned now.

His series of work is the refraction of the fantasy of a nostalgic past, a landscape of memory with change in space and time. Cultural memory of past events and of originary narratives become enmeshed in the reconstructions of past and relating it with knowledge to a contemporary situation
by criticism, appropriation, preservation and transformation.

His maximum art works are invocation towards the phenomenology of a new vision of re-visiting and re-defining the interrelationships between cultural memory, identity and history in a situation of loss of and reinvention of “self” in a globalize and yet localized world. S. Hall’s assertion that culture and identity are irrevocably intertwined through memory.

Born in 1969 in Odisha, Birendra Pani is a young artist living and working in New Delhi. Pani graduated in printmaking with a Bachelor's degree from Kalabhavan at the Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan, in West Bengal, and received his Master's degree (first class with distinction) in Graphics from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the M.S. University, Baroda.

Birendra Pani also dabbles in animation and filmmaking, and has worked with UTV in Mumbai. He has participated in major shows in India and abroad and is the recipient of many awards. In 2001 he was awarded the Junior Fellowship of the HRD Ministry by the Government of India.

Birendra Pani
Born in 1969, Bhadrak, Orissa,India.
FINE ARTS EDUCATION
1997-99 :MFA, Faculty of Fine arts M.S. University Baroda.
1991-97 :BFA. Kala Bhavan. Viswabharati University, Shantiniketan.
SOLO EXHIBITION
2009 “Re-vision” Gallery Espace New Delhi & RL fine arts newyork.
2007 “Boy Dancer’’ The convergence and continuum , Gallery Espace new delhi.
“Boy Dancer’’’ The convergence and continuum, ,Faculty Gallery, M.S.U.Baroda.
2006 “Risk’’ The Double Edge of Society , Gallery Espace,new delhi .
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS IN INDIA AND ABROAD
2009 “Art for Concern” Mumbai.
“Towards a New Viewership / Audience” Curated by Rajashree Biswal, LKA Bhubaneswar
2008 “Keep Drawing” Gallery Espace, New Delhi.
“India Art Summit” Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.
ABC Contemporary Art Auction & Exhibition OSIAN Art Curated by Neville Tuli, Mumbai & New Delhi.
“The Golf Art Show” Org. by Gallery Espace, Hold in, Dubai.
“Live Wire” Visual Arts Center, Hong Kong.
“Dimensions & Directions” Mon Art Gallery, Kolkata.
“Amazing” Curated by Anupa Mehta, RPG Show, Jahangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
2007 “Indian Art Show” Org. by Gallery Espace & Ganges Art Gallery, Cork Street, London.
“The Golf Art Show” Org. by Gallery Espace, Dubai.
“20th Century Indian Art” Org. by Art Curial, Paris.
“Concern India Foundation Auction Show” Mumbai.
“Similarities” Indian Contemporary Art, Curated by Anupa Mehta, LansdowneGallery, Mumbai.
2006 The Indian Contemporary Art, Nehru Center, London.
Metrospective show curated by Himanshu Varma, Red earth, New Delhi.
2005 ”Now” Indian contemporary Artists. Arushi Arts New Delhi.
“Metrospective show”curated by Himanshu Varma at Kitab Mahal ,Mumbai.
“Present and Future” corated by Saryu Doshi at NGMA, Mumbai
“Detour” group exhibition at gallery 88 – Mumbai
2004 “Singular Identity” curated by Alka Pande, Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
Jugalbandi group exhibition, Gallery One Twenty Eight organized by paper wasp Studio, New York
“New mediatic realism” curated by Nancy Adjania at ABS Bayer Gallery, Baroda.
2003 Group Exhibition with Auction, fn-fn: figurative and nonfigurative narration, curated by Neville Tuli (Osians), Nariman Bhavan,
Mumbai
“Eighth Harmony show” curated by Tina Ambani, Nehru Centre, Mumbai
2002 Group exhibition: “Cross Current”, curated by Anupa Mehta, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
Group exhibition of Painting: “Tribute to Picasso”, Gallery Guild, Mumbai
Group exhibition of Painting: The Carnival of Indian Art” organized by Anupa Meheta and Harsh Goenka of RPG Group, Jehangir
Art Gallery, Mumbai
Exhibition of Painting: “ Words and Images, Gallery Guild, Curated by Girish Sahane, Mumbai
2001 Group exhibition of Painting: The Nude Study, Gallery Guild, Mumbai
Group exhibition of Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai Gallery Espace Curated by Madhu Jain, New Delhi.
2000 Group exhibition of Paintings Sans Stache Art Gallery Mumbai
AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIP
2001 Junior Fellowship, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of New Delhi, India.
1997 11th All India Art Contest & Exhibition South Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur, Maharastra.
50 years Post Indian Independence Art Award at Bhubaneswar .Orissa
1995-98 Orissa Lalit Kala Academy, Orissa.
Presently the artist lives and works in New Delhi.