Hetain Patel

Today we had an interesting lecture given by Hetain Patel. He is a visual artist who graduated in 2003 and has been working on a variety of pieces of art ever since. He focuses on using photography and film to express whatever theme he wants. He uses his own body within his work,; for example he paints himself in many different ways and then photographs his work. I really liked these images as there was a lot of texture involved; creating different shapes within the design.



 Kanku (left panel from triptych), 2003
Lambda Prints

Mehndi 3, 2004
C-type photograph

His practical work began with a focus on pigments from the Indian rituals he has grown up with at home. These pigments for him have been strong signifiers of Indian identity, and include the red pigment Kanku more commonly used to mark a dot on the Hindu forehead, and henna paste. Hetain showed us a very interesting piece; a live performance called 'Copy/Paste 2006' in which members of the public could enter and exit whenever they wished. It involved him and a henna artist painting his body with henna paint. She painted his back while a camera filmed this so it could be projected onto a screen in front of Hetain so he could copy the design and paint it onto his front. Hetain explained how when he first asked the other artist to help, she didn't quite understand as she had focused painting faces/hands for weddings. Nevertheless after the performance she was very excited and couldn't stop talking. He found it interesting how at first they didn't share a common language through art but after actually doing it they created a new dialogue. I could relate to this as when working in our groups for this project,everyone comes from a different specialism and have different ideas, however when we come together it creates a new, interesting artistic dialogue.