'Learning to Be Indian' is a new video work by Nottingham based artist Hetain Patel. Patel's work centres on the struggle to place his identity between two very different cultures and the sense of displacement he feels from his inherited culture as a second generation British Indian. Growing up in the western world, Patel seeks to question what he is told about how and who an Indian should be.

ABOUT HETAIN PATEL
'Mane Samje Pare - I understand now' - A statement from the artist.

The concerns in my practice revolve around the displacement of Indian culture to the UK and how this goes about shaping my identity as a second generation British India.

Identity confusion in second generation immigrants comes from the fact that we have never experienced our parents' home hand culture in the totality of its original context. Specifically in my case, I was born and raised in England, not India. And although I lead a largely Western lifestyle, I still feel rooted with certain Indian ideals. The question is, to what extent?

Through my photographic work, I have been exploring this through aspects of Indian culture that feel most unnatural to me - rituals. Wedding and prayer rituals, for example, seem to me to be a big signifier of culture and yet they are inherently arbitrary. My approach to exploring the materials used in these rituals is to use larger quantities of them - whereas kanku is usually applied as a red dot to the forehead, I spread it over my entire face, head and upper body. Can I understand it better if I use more of it? Will it make me a better Indian?

I have also been looking at my practice recently as a means to created my own rites of passage - in other cultures, for example, Aboriginal or tribal cultures, there are initiations to signify passage to man hood such as a act of killing prey or tribal scarring or tattooing. We in the West do not have such rites - there are no guidelines to follow to initiate and accept me as a British Indian man - to this end, my repeated 4-5 hour long ritual of imposing mehndi or kanku onto my body is my attempted rites of passage. The difference, I suppose, is that the marks left on my body are never permanent, they last a maximum of 2 weeks. This identity has to be constantly reapplied and redefined.

My work has only ever been shown as a photograph, but I am now looking to show my work as a video or maybe even as performance, this seems only natural now that the process interests me more than the finished product.

Becoming more and more integrated into my practice is tabla drumming. The tablas are Indian drums, traditionally taught and played by Indians. I currently take lessons in this and look at it as another way of exploring this idea of understanding the Indian mindset.

The composure and mannerism involved feel like a very direct way to explore this and for me, are not unrelated to the performance of applying material to my body with my hands.

I am interested in both the physical side of things and also the dialogue between my teacher and myself. Almost like this idea of taking lessons in being Indian.

Whether it is photography, video, performance or any combination of these, it is the identity issues that lead the work - a visually common theme has been the use of my own body. I find the most direct way to explore identity is to interrogate its greatest signifier.

I am currently exploring notions of drumming directly onto my body with the idea of performing within the time cycles involved in tabla drumming. I like the idea of literally drumming my culture into myself. This of course will either go with or against my natural drum beat - that of my heart or my pulse. Would it be more natural to drum to the amplified sound of my own heart beat?

As far as identity politics are concerned, having tried to impose what is in effect another skin onto myself, it now seems more natural to try to locate something within myself, with a live beat or pulse as a starting point.

For more information, visit www.hetainpatel.com

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