Sid Pattni

A BORROWED MYTH I

A borrowed myth (I, II & III) is a series that examines the legacies of colonial rule and their enduring impact on identity, memory, and cultural inheritance within the Indian diaspora.

The British colonisation of India was a system built through strategic conquest, economic domination, and the erosion of indigenous sovereignty. One such instrument of control was the Doctrine of Lapse (1848), a policy that allowed the British East India Company to absorb princely states lacking a direct male successor, effectively dissolving centuries of dynastic autonomy.

In my work, the faceless prince emerges as a spectral figure — not simply as an individual but as a stand-in for countless rulers whose power and identity were systematically erased. These portraits serve as meditations on the psychological and cultural dismemberment wrought by colonial intervention.

The central figure is enveloped in a richly ornate floral frame, borrowing from the language of 17th and 18th century Indian miniature painting. Once a symbol of intricate storytelling and courtly identity, the miniature tradition was later co-opted and reshaped under colonial gaze to accommodate Western aesthetics. My work seeks to subvert and expand its formal boundaries. The work considers how visual culture can both preserve and distort memory — and how diasporic identity continues to reckon with the visual residue of empire.

All Hail the Queen! is part of a continuing series that interrogates the intricate interplay between identity, colonial histories, and diasporic experience. Central to this work is the figure of Queen Victoria, a potent symbol of British imperial authority and cultural hegemony. During the height of colonisation in India, there were more statues of Queen Victoria erected across the country than there were Indian people serving in the upper echelons of civil service. In this context, the Queen becomes both an emblem of domination and a mechanism of erasure—an omnipresent reminder of the West’s imposition upon the Indian psyche and public space. In doing so, she reshaped the narratives of the colonised, dictating how they were perceived externally and how they came to perceive themselves.

This work explores the complexities of identity, focusing on how I come to understand myself through visual languages shaped by orientalist and colonial histories. The work borrows and adapts imagery from a range of sources including Company Paintings, botanical drawings and Mughal miniatures, and puts disparate pieces from these works back together. Crucially, they’re about getting it wrong – producing pictures that speak of the here and now. I’m very attracted to the cycle of collapsing interpretations, telling a story of how India is perceived externally and how generations of Indians came to internalise and inhabit Western projections of “Indian-ness” today. Ultimately, my portrait is not a fixed statement but a dynamic exploration of identity which is a constant negotiation between inherited histories and the lived realities of the here and now.

Sid Pattni is an Australian artist of Indian descent whose practice interrogates the visual legacies of colonisation and their impact on diasporic identity. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, he migrated to Australia at age 13. His work reconfigures Mughal miniatures, Company paintinggs, colonial archives, embroidery, and botanical illustration, weaving these visual traditions into composite languages that examine how aesthetics shaped under empire continue to frame cultural memory, belonging, and identity. Pattni has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize (2025), the Lester Prize (2020, 2024, 2025), and the National Emerging Artist Prize (2024). He was awarded the Kennedy Prize (2023) and Flinders Lane Emerging Artist Award (2023) and has exhibited widely, including at India Art Fair (2025) and Sydney Contemporary (2025). He recently presented a sell-out solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney and his works are held in both public and private collections across Australia.