Pop goes the world and India: A talk with artist Ketna Patel

Investigating populism in today’s G-local ‘pop-culture’ – a conversation with pop artist Ketna Patel. By the Pothi team

British Indian mixed-media Pop-Artist Ketna Patel is the walking embodiment of what it means to be a hybrid, kaleidoscopic Global citizen today. Born and raised in East-Africa to Gujarati parents, educated in London, before spending 25 years in South East Asia and India, she simultaneously belongs everywhere and nowhere. Her vibrant artworks and experimentation with different mediums is the unique result of three core aspects. First, her academic training in architecture and design. Second, her insatiable curiosity for a deeper exploration of individual and collective ‘identity’. Finally, the feeling of responsibility as an artist to hold a mirror up to the current state of our increasingly polarised world.

Since leaving Singapore in April 2013, she has shared her time between two ‘travelling studios’ in London, and Pune, India. These locations afford her two unique perches; allowing her to observe closely European and Asian culture within the interconnected interfaces of the twenty first century. Most of her work has involved analysing various dichotomies: the urban-rural divide, the dynamic between east and west, and the linkage between globalisation and populism. In this interview, conducted in March 2021, she reflects upon her research into these topics, including her findings and methodology, her conception of the roles and responsibilities of the artist, and her experience of expatriation and the return home.

“We have not been very good story tellers in the East. We have not documented our own culture in the way that Europeans or Americans have. As a result, there is a lot of misperception, suspicion and ambiguity from the West regarding what Asian culture is all about, resulting in a lot of stereotypes. As such, I want to excavate this narrative by surfacing quintessential ‘Asian’ stories, but geared for the west, because that\’s where I see the bewilderment happening. As a shift happens, it’s at that interface that the confusion happens, and if I can help as an artist then I can try and defuse some of the inevitable tension that is going to arrive.”

In addition to this focus, a second major aspect of her work is investigating identity politics, with questions such as: “What shapes identity, what are the big narratives in our culture that shape perception, and opinion?”

Being a deeply multicultural artist, she does not solely focus on Singapore, India, or England. Rather, having travelling studios, straddling continents and cultures, allows her investigation to span across the globe. In addition, it allows her the resources to explore various mediums: “India is like taking a dip into the sea of humanity. It gives me access to an immense energetic bathing of Asian experience.  It also affords me the ability to explore and experiment with materials and techniques through its rich crafts culture.  On the other side of the spectrum, Europe is where my head works; where I sit down and the intellectual side of me unpacks life impressions and deconstructs it into meaning.  It is where I can join up as many dots as possible; draw lines connecting politics, economics and sociology. In the relative quiet of my London or Pune studios, all the travelling gets translated into art; either on canvas, board or the computer. Geography becomes internalized… It does not really matter which part of the world I am in anymore.  What matters is for me to release to the Art making process what lies inside of me!”

“We all know there is a shift happening in the world, so what I’m doing with my work is a kind of guerrilla journalism. I’m looking behind the doors and trying to get a feel of where ordinary people are at. Everybody is so busy; when would they have time to sit with an old man smoking his ‘beedi’ under a big tree? Or the old village woman who knows of amazing recipes and home remedies that will go undocumented… What happens to all these stories? There is a big difference between the container of information and the content, and I’m interested in content creation by looking at the smaller stories of individuals. I’m very much on the side of individualism and expression and not on the side of large conveyor belt homogeneous existence.

“Using photographs, I have taken of people and places visited and experienced, together with text from ‘found’ reading material (newspapers, magazines, junk brochures, menus etc), I collage and make up narratives that speak of a larger societal change,” Ketna explains. She hopes that by bringing into the spotlight the lesser told stories of individuals, her artwork can foster reflection, discussion, and in the long term, mutual understanding, free of disdain and judgement, from all sides, on the complex subject of populism.

“I’m currently learning about the places that mainstream Britain has ‘left behind’ or relegated as ‘stage sets’ for caricatured nostalgia; rural areas, postcard looking hamlets, ex mining welsh villages etc. How is Modern Britain and multiculturalism thriving in these rarefied contexts? Being on the receiving end of prejudice myself, I know the value of curiosity, and how sincere questioning can yield enriching human encounters and overcome many prejudices. I enjoy tuning into gatherings where I can eavesdrop on the voices from live community, be these church sermons or gardening clubs.  I\’ve learned a lot from chatting with ex-miners, having tea with grannies, playing with kids on the street, basically listening to the rumblings of the country usually dismissed by Westminster,” she says.

This fresh perspective that Ketna brings with her has already won her much acclaim.  Indeed, at the recent Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead, London, her exhibition was greeted with exclamations of surprise and gratitude.  Many visitors remarked on the sheer topical power of the artworks; the combination of colour, narrative and socio-political awareness.

Similarly, some of the artist’s most memorable projects in Asia have been accessible, grass-roots interventions such as ‘Art residencies’ that she has organised in the villages of India. In 2016, she co-curated, crowd funded and participated in a month-long residency in the village of Gunehar, Himachal Pradesh, where ten artists from various disciplines used derelict shops as live ateliers or studios to make work informed by the village itself. The entire process was made transparent to the villagers (indeed they all participated in the works) and was filmed and documented in meticulous detail. This remarkable experience took up half a year of Ketna’s time, and captured the attention of phenomenal national Press coverage. The following year, she partnered with an artist friend for a similar project in the arts and crafts village of Raghurajpur, Odisha.

In 2018, she spent a month making a giant rotating sculpture in an Art Residency curated by artist Katharina Kakar at Ambica Beri’s Art Laboratory in rural Madhya Pradesh.  Next year, she will be documenting the Gujarati villages of Charotar, in particular her ancestral village of Karamsad for a Brit-Indian project she has in mind.

From living with naga babas in Kumbh melas to camping in Kashmir, Ketna has been obsessively travelling and “reading” India for the last 30 years.  Indeed, one of her main mission is to celebrate and make stronger the emotional, economic and cultural bridges between Britain and India by interfacing between art, academia and policy.  Last year, India Inc publicly recognised her as a UK-India Youth Leader, she became a member of the think tank ‘Bridge India\’ (www.bridgeindia.org.uk), and was invited to be a working member of the steering committee of the Commonwealth Women in Business network.

The artist ultimately talked of a deeper, existential truth: “Whether or not we’d like to admit it, we are living in a global capitalist culture: in a hyped-up cult of celebrity where we’re made to feel we’re nothing unless we prove ourselves,” and in a spectacular way too. In this sense, it seems, everyone is automatically effaced. The desire to belong then transcends skin colour, class politics, and even the physical, to a mental place of pure acknowledgment.