London artist challenges all what we take for granted - race, gender, language

Actors Freddie OpokuAddaie and Victoria Shulungu play groom and bride in Hetain Patels Dont Look at the Finger a film in which a wedding ceremony witnesses new twists PicsHetain Patel Chatterjee and LalWe latch on to our heroes for different reasons I have always been a big fan of Bruce Lee For me Bruce Lee is a skinny Asian hero and as a kid I hated being skinny it wasnt cool at all I grew up in a white neighbourhood and then there is this hero who is not white and is kicking everyones a Everyone wants to be him even the white kids says Hetain PatelWe have been watching Patels film Dont Look at the Finger 2017 at gallery Chatterjee and Lal in Colaba With a couple of hours to go for the opening when the space will be packed to the rafters with visitors at the ongoing Mumbai Gallery Weekend we are at a relative advantage The cinematic scores that accompany this film and The Jump another work by Patel fill the gallery in a dramatic Hollywood moment The title Dont Look at the Finger will be one that Bruce Lee afficionados will be able to pick on quickly After all it was the great actor the trailblazer for a whole generation that took to martial arts as a form of hobby who commanded Dont think FeelThat may well be the case as you watch the film A single channel work that is 16minuteslong Dont Look at the Finger features an allblack cast dressed in what seems like traditional West African attire A bride walks into a hall most likely a church where her groom waits The cult scene one that we have repeatedly consumed from Hollywood is familiar but is quickly upturned when the minister uses sign language to communicate with the tobe coupleBaas House 2015 features Patel as Spiderman with grandmother LaxmibenAnd its not just her the families and the couple also communicate with each other through gestures So you think perhaps feeling a little selfcongratulatory this should be interesting an entire wedding ceremony that takes place in sign language Just as you prepare yourself the groom and the bride start combating each other the way Bruce Lee did and the way The Matrix series did it again An arm outstretched the bride challenges the groom with the iconic hand gesture Bring it on The marital has just met the martial like it does in life at timesNo you cannot get comfortable when its a film by Patel He just wont let you He describes Dont Look at the Finger commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella with Manchester Art Gallery and QUAD as an African Kung Fu film I wanted to see how to bring all these elements that are usually considered exotic a West African family sign language and East Asian martial arts and lace them with a mode we all recognise Hollywood This means epic music cinematography and choreography I wanted to create a world where supposedly disparate elements make sense together he saysFor that matter the church an actual space in London became a nightclub in its next avatar and will soon become a performance space The printed tunics and dresses that the actors don which we will easily identify with an African tribe are actually Dutch wax prints Yet these diverse elements are seamlessly married together in the filmThe superhero challengePatel has done this before Born and raised in the UK the Londonbased artist hails from a secondgeneration family of migrants The idea of identity as a shifting concept is one that pervades this 37yearolds work but it is not related to his own transnational identity alone In a TED performance in 2013 he demonstrated exactly this Available online the piece has Patel challenging all our assumptions about him Asian man educated For most of the piece he sits on his haunches much like how we see labourers do in MumbaiOnly Patels crouching stance has more to do with Spiderman The Jump 2015 has Patel mimicking the muchadored superhero The work is a twochannel video installation and opens with what seems like a standard family portrait shot in the living room The cast is Patels family dressed like they would for a wedding and shot at his grandmothers house in Bolton UK The video slowly reveals to us a Spidey waiting to jump from the couch Its an odd entry for the superhero an Indian familys living room is not what you would have expected for Spideys grand entranceYet we may have all been like Patel at some point in our lives The way he used to leap off his grandmothers couch as a child pretending to be Spiderman is relatable The domestic space is ironically the arena for fantasies to come alive as Patel used to tie to his watch a string with a paperclip at the end of it Shooting it at the door a web was formed temporarily in his imaginationBut I didnt want my family or ethnicity to be part of both films I want to free myself and my ethnicity from getting typecast he says Patel says that he often gets curated in group shows that engage with the idea of diaspora but hardly ever in those on British identityVisitors may find that Dont Look at the Finger is more nuanced and layered than The Jump but both offer evidence that Patel is not hesitant to bring pop culture into a gallery It hasnt always been that way I had to give myself permission to do that for pop culture references can be seen as a dirty thing in the art world I used to hope that I wouldnt be discredited as an artist But being an artist means I cant hold myself back I love conceptual art and archives as much as Marvels Black Panther You dont have to be on one side of the fence or the other How many times have you been to an art exhibition a wellcurated one and gone home to switch on Sex and the CityCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news current affairs from Mumbai local news crime news and breaking headlines hereDownload the new midday Android and iOS apps to get updates on all the latest and trending stories on the go