Hetain Patel is a visual artist. Since 2004, his video, photography and live works have been shown internationally within institutions such as the Tate Britain, London, and the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
Hetain’s practice, exploring the subtle and often humorous complexities of identity formation, is manifested in multiple forms, and has so far been presented in galleries, theatres, on screen, on the web, on the printed page, and once in a housing estate in the outskirts of Sydney.
Hetain has done Bruce Lee impersonations on stage at the Royal Opera House, completed performance commissions for Tate Modern and Southbank Centre, made a working class Transformer robot from an old Ford Fiesta car (with his dad), toured his live performance, TEN, internationally (in English and French), and been invited to do a TED talk which has since been viewed globally over two million times.
Hetain Patel blends Hollywood, West Africa and East Asia in his new moving image work, Don’t Look at the Finger (2017). The film charts a ritualistic ‘fight’ between two characters in a church; as they converse through choreography, the power struggles of relationships are expressed, culminating in a ceremonial coming together. This fusion of signifiers is characteristic of the Bolton-born artist’s work. He connects marginalised identities with popular culture to challenge assumptions about what is ‘authentic’. Patel’s work encompasses photographs, videos, sculptures and live performance; alongside Don’t Look at the Finger, The New Art Gallery is showing the artist’s sculpture of himself in a Spider-Man suit, The Other Suit 2.
Hetain Patel: Don’t Look at the Finger. New Art Gallery, Walsall, 22 June - 29 July 2018
