Where Are All the British Asian Artists?

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

There is very little recognition of contemporary British Asian artists working in the mainstream UK art scene today. Sound like a bold statement? Let’s take a look: there’s Anish Kapoor, whose huge biomorphic sculptures first came to prominence back in the 1980s. Kapoor went on to great success, winning the Turner Prize and exhibiting everywhere from the 2012 Olympics, the Rockefeller Center, to inside the Tate Modern and outside the Millennium Dome. His work has also netted him a CBE. So yeah, Sir Anish Kapoor is doing OK for himself.

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So Kapoor’s the big household name, but what about other British Asian artists? There’s photographer and filmmaker Zarina Bhimji (shortlisted for the 2007 Turner Prize), multimedia artist Shezad Dawood (who has exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery and whose Future Light is currently showing at the Vienna Biennial), audio sculptor Haroon Mirza (winner of the Silver Lion for Most Promising Artist at the Venice Bienalle, 2011), and multimedia artist Chila Kumari Burman (exhibited at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the V&A).

These are all artists who have achieved varying degrees of success, but if you’re not a dedicated follower, practitioner, or scholar of British contemporary art, you’d be forgiven for never having heard of them before. And if you do recognize the names, then would you associate them as synonymous with British contemporary art in the same way as you would, say, the likes of Damien Hirst and his formaldehyde tiger shark? Or Tracey Emin’s messy bed? Or Grayson Perry’s tapestries?

The YBAs still form a strong influential framework for British contemporary art, as does the Turner Prize, but if you look at these environments where modern British art routinely flourishes, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the artists spawned from these creative wombs are predominantly white. The Turner Prize hasn’t seen a non-Caucasian winner since Steve McQueen in 1999, and nearly all the YBA alumni are white (Hirst and Emin aside, there’s Marc Quinn, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Gavin Turk, and The Chapman Brothers—the notable exception here being Chris Ofili).

According to the 2011 UK Census, British Asians make up roughly seven percent of the UK population (“all white ethnic groups” make up 86 percent, Black British just over three percent). When you look at the ostensibly progressive cultural sphere of the contemporary art scene, this lack of representation for “minority ethnic artists” seems pretty surprising.

Hardeep Pandhal is a Birmingham-born artist living in Glasgow. He’s gradually starting to become well-regarded in the art world (he’s a recipient of the Drawing Room’s Bursary Award; a 2013 Bloomberg New Contemporary and has been reviewed in Frieze, amongst other things) for his work, which incorporates an eclectic mix of video art (home movies and pseudo-documentaries), collages, drawings and paintings, sculpture, and even his mom’s own knitwear (jumpers with knitted portraits of everyone from 2Pac to Bruce Parry to Sikh religious martyr Baba Deep Singh). Hardeep also happens to be a second generation British Sikh and, whether he likes it or not, he’s likely to always be categorized as a “British Asian artist.” I spoke to him about his experiences in the art industry and how his work (influenced by everything from satire to Sikh mythology, from rappers to racism) both embraces and rejects notions of cultural identity.

VICE: OK, first off: to quote you from one of your films (JojoBoys): “This whole thing about being British-Asian is kind of a bit weird … Because it’s the truth, but, you know, it doesn’t need to be the truth.” What do you mean by this?
Hardeep Pandhal: [Laughs] All I’m talking about there is positive discrimination and, you know, pointing out that that’s the situation. But it’s like a very Catch 22 thing, isn’t it? Because there’s interpretation that goes along with making an exhibition and making artwork. A part of that is to communicate to people that may not know much about art, or whatever, where they’re [the artist] is coming from. I think also that happened [the quote] because the people I did the work for, in the interpretation they used that label. So I thought “well, that’s interesting, I’ll play off that.”

It’s a label you can’t really avoid, even if you want to, right?
Yeah. It all depends on the work as well. Because of what I’m doing, the images and stuff, if a white person did it they’d probably get accused of being racist. You know what I mean? That’s positive discrimination… It’s like, black rappers can say the “N” word and white rappers can’t. Same thing.

Do you think this definition can add additional substance to your work? Say if an audience knows a bit about your background?
It does for me because I use, you know, personal references.

Like your home movies?
Yeah, it’s not just things I’ve made up. I mean, obviously there’s art history that I’m acquiring, and it’s public money—most of the things I’ve done on a commission basis—and that’s mediated by the curators and people that work for “charitable organizations.” So I communicate with those, and between my own personal stuff and the climate, a lot of the interpretation comes out of that.

Do you feel limited by working with public money?
No, not really, because it’s like, that’s one of the biggest points of doing art…

As a kind of social tool?
Errm… yeah, I think it should edify people’s conscience [laughs]. You know, it should make things better, a better life… [as an artist] you’ve got a license to not worry so much about confusion and saying the right thing. You’re accountable in a different way.

A different way?
Different to, say, official discourse, policy makers. People who run the country, basically.

Would you call yourself a satirist?
Part of me says no because I’m not trying to make people laugh, but a part of me says yes, because the idea of the work—some of it—is to put viewers in a position of self-reflection, which is what satire does.

And do you feel like you have a certain amount of responsibility?
I do a little bit, more so now because the audience is getting broader, bigger. And if you’re in that position, then you might influence other people from the same kind of background. So there’s that responsibility because you don’t know how much influence you might have.

What about how you classify yourself—would you refer to yourself as a British Sikh artist?
No, not really. I use imagery and things that I know about, because I come from that background and have inherited the traditions; it’s a part of my make-up. I wouldn’t [label myself that way], but I don’t correct people if they do.

And it still communicates something. Say for instance humor, it’s a culturally coded thing. It’s not universal—the humor of British people is quite distinct, so it does help to say someone’s British if they make work that uses, or where there’s an echo of, tropes of the culture.

Going back to this idea of reaching other people from the same background…
Yeah that’s kind of like in the back of my head, I guess.

But in contemporary UK art, it’s pretty white-saturated. There’s very few mainstream “minority artists.” As far as British-Asian artists are concerned, do you know of any?
There’s a guy from Birmingham called Harminder Singh Judge. He’s a bit older than me, he does stuff about the mystical, religious experience. So again, it’s not really about politics.

Any others?
There’s a film artist—Shezad Dawood. He’s an accomplished filmmaker and again, it’s about rituals and that kind of thing.

From where I’m standing—as someone outside the industry—most of those established artists, the ones managing to support themselves as professional working artists, all tend to be, like, 80 to 90 percent white.
Well, this is a generalization but from my experience it’s to do with upbringing. Say like, from a parent’s perspective—there’s like no point encouraging art development because it’s not gonna make you any money basically [laughs]. It has to do with the relationship between class and race, I guess.

Do you feel like it’s more privileged kids who have the opportunity to practice art from an early age, without having to worry about money? That it’s a certain upbringing?
It’s hard to speculate on that, but obviously there are statistics out there. The issue for me is that it can be quite patronizing, being the recipient of positive discrimination. It’s a part of the world and it’s a part of curating as well. Say, if someone does a show that only has men in it, then it will get heavily criticized on that basis.

How would you like to be seen? As a British artist?
It depends. If I was in a show in like, India, or Africa, or whatever, then it’d probably make sense to say I was from Britain. But if I’m in Britain, then there’s no need to say it I don’t think.

Your work’s been described by Frieze as “purposely slippery in its exploration of cultural identity.” Do you think this is an accurate description?
That exhibition was in a triennial, which was curated around the theme of Asia, so you either had to be an artist of Asian descent or make work about Asia to some degree. It’s quite an unusual, broad, and also specific remit. It was about curating, so I kind of wanted to question that as well. That’s why that work was about the pitfalls of positive discrimination in a sense.

We need [positive discrimination] for the sake of cultural progress—the arts need to be diverse. You need to have it, to make the world more equal, but it only does it by using these terms that are problematic. It’s just a mental situation.

Hardeep Pandhal is currently exhibiting a solo show, ‘Plebeian Archive,’ at The David Dale Gallery in Glasgow, which runs until October 24, and has another forthcoming exhibition at the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, which opens November 13.