Pankaj Vishwakarma (born 1986, in Azamgarh, UP) is a Vadodara-based artist. He comes from a migrant working class family from a rural village in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh now settled
in the industrial town of Ankaleshwar, Gujarat. He received his Master of Visual Arts in Printmaking (Gold Medal) and Bachelor of Visual Arts in painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 2012 and 2009 respectively.
His artistic practice stems from these experiences of growing up as a migrant in a working class neighborhood. Often troubled about the dilemmas of his belongingness his works attempt to question the very elite narratives of the object hood of art. His works are also an interrogation into the question of how displacement and industrial landscape constantly shapes one's ideology and about belonging to a place, culture and identity.
Pankaj is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York in 2020-21.
He did his online solo “Enamel Industria”, Terrain.art, 2021 and Flow/Flaws, in Knots an experimental art space, Vadodara, Gujarat, 2018, also he has shown at Bikaner House, New Delhi, Conflictorium Museum, Ahmedabad,Lalit Kala Akademi Regional Centre, Chennai, Art Centrix Space, New Delhi, Priyasri Art Gallery, Mumbai. He was awarded the Junior Research Fellowship in 2016-2017 by CCRT, New Delhi. Pankaj achieved many residencies such as Chromatophilia cycle-15, Piramal art residency, Mumbai in 2018. Kanoria Centre for Arts, Studio Residency, Ahmedabad for the year of 2014-15 and 2013-14. Art residency at Uttarayan Art Foundation, Gujarat in 2012 and at the Kalakriti foundation, Hyderabad, India in 2008