Hetain Patel


Hetain Patel is an English visual artist specializing in performance, sculpture, video, and photography. His work has been exhibited in Norway, India, Belgium, and the United Kingdom.

Early life and education

Patel was born and raised in a working class British Gujarati Asian household in Bolton, England. He was subjected to racial abuse, stating, "just walking from the house to the car was difficult." As a child, Patel developed an interest in superhero movies, playing as Spider-Man in his grandmother's house.
In addition to sci-fi and mainstream-influenced works, Patel experiments with addressing problems of multiculturalism and self-acceptance. As Patel became older, his father, who worked at a day job converting cars, inspired him to create his first sculpture. Patel converted his first car, which was gifted by his father in 1997, into his first sculpture, Fiesta Transformer. Patel's interest in movies such as Transformers led to its title, the Fiesta Transformer.
He received a Diploma Foundation Studies in Art and Design from the University of Salford in 2000 and a BA Hons Fine Art in 2003 from Nottingham Trent University.

Work

Sacred Bodies is a collection of self-portraits. To create each piece, he covered his upper body in patterns using henna and a red pigment, Kanku, used for markings of cultural importance in Hindu communities.
In 2013, he made his debut at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh. In 2014, a UK-based dance company, Candoco, assigned Hetain Patel to create a choreographic art piece. Hetain uses minimal spoken word as parts of the performance through the usage of three languages: English, French, and British Sign Language.
Oh Man was a collaborative project between Contact Youth Company and Hetain Patel that is about the positive qualities of masculinity and the problems caused by toxic masculinity.

Selected exhibitions

Performance