“It is Patel’s
skilled precision in realising an almost seamless harmony of his culturally and historically divergent source material that gives his installations a distinctive resonance.”
– Robert Clark, The Guardian
“…seamlessly weaves storytelling and music to create a humorous, engaging and refreshingly unpretentious interrogation of cultural identity… The piece
is exquisitely constructed, yet the colloquial delivery makes its complexity seem effortless, and means that its philosophy is never inaccessible…an unusual, fresh and honest work of art.”
– Thea Warren, Three Weeks, August 27, 2011
(Five Star review on Hetain’s live piece TEN, presented at Edinburgh International Fringe Festival, 2011)
“Intelligent, thoughtful, humourous and hypnotic”
– Ian Palmer, The Dancing Times
(Reviewing TEN, 2011)
“The work of Hetain Patel has travelled a long way in the relatively short time since he completed his degree in 2003. Roots, identity and tradition have lead not to a narrowing or specialisation in his work, but to increased openness. Sine Language operates not only in the grey area between East and West, but between different mediums, times and creative possibilities.”
– Wayne Burrows, METRO, Jan 16, 2007
(reviewing Sine Language at City Gallery, Leicester)
“ …To anybody who has followed Patel’s work over the past few years, this may seem like familiar ground. He rose above the parapet by patterning his skin with highly intricate Indian motifs, and taking photographs of them… After taking up his post as artist-in-residence at Lakeside Arts Centre, Patel began to get interested in performance art, wondering if he was done with static exhibitions… Now in Sine Language, Patel is moving beyond the “Who am I?” issue of cultural identity and into a more general quest for a universal physical language of rhythm expressed as movement, sound and colour.”
– Mark Patterson, Nottingham Evening Post, Mar 2- 8, 2007
(reviewing Sine Language at Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham)
“ What is refreshing about Patel’s collisions of tradition with contemporary art practice is that they consciously complicate simple dichotomies such as traditional/contemporary and Indian/British through gestures of playful self-awareness that, ten years ago, I would almost certainly described as “postmodern”… Patel’s work is truly contemporary in that it deals formally and conceptually with one of the most interesting phenomena of culture today.”
– Peter Urquart, The Times Higher Education Supplement, April 28, 2006
