Imran Perretta
Visual Arts recipient 2023
Imran Perretta is an artist working with the moving image, sound, installation and performance to explore ideas of power, identity, migration and belonging. His research seeks to challenge the conception of the nation state and its unilateral violence against those that are both marginalised within and stranded at its borders. Much of his work centres on his experience of coming from a diasporic, South Asian background, meditating on the process of identity forming in a post‑9/11 era characterised by austerity, state violence, mass displacement and the War on Terror.
In 2019, Perretta was selected to make the destructors, his most ambitious film to date, co-commissioned by Spike Island, Chisenhale Gallery and the Whitworth. It was received to critical acclaim, acquired for the Tate collection, and led to him working with the BBC on an upcoming feature film. In 2020, he was awarded a Turner Prize Bursary for the work.
“I feel so incredibly fortunate to have the support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation at a critical moment in my life as an artist and a young parent. This award will help me to support my family whilst allowing me to spend more time in the studio free of the fear of financial pressure. The PHF award feels like a timely vote of confidence in my practice and I will be forever grateful to the Foundation, the nominators and the judges. This award is truly life changing.”
In addition to his individual artistic practice, he collaborates on various sound projects including AMRA, with Paul Purgas and Suroor with Purgas and Nabihah Iqbal. Both of these projects serve as platforms to explore the complex traditions of south Asian classical music with a uniquely experimental approach.
In 2024, Perretta will have solo exhibitions at Somerset House, London and Secession, Vienna. During this time he will also begin photography on his feature length project with BBC Films.
Examples of work
THE DESTRUCTORS, 2019
Dual screen video. 23 minutes 35 seconds duration (extract 2 minutes). Drawing on the artist’s own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage, the destructors explores personal and collective experiences of alienation. Shot on location in Tower Hamlets, East London, it reconsiders the figure of alienated male youth, exploring the complexities of ‘coming of age’ for young Muslim men living in the UK. Presented at Spike Island (2019), Chisenhale Gallery (2020), BALTIC (2020) and Whitworth (2021).
THE DESTRUCTORS 2019
Installation view of the destructors at Chisenhale Gallery in 2020. Presented at Spike Island (2019), Chisenhale Gallery (2020), BALTIC (2020) and Whitworth (2021).
15 DAYS, 2018
Dual-screen video. 12 minutes duration (extract 2 minutes). 15 days is inspired by the time that the artist spent in Northern France with former inhabitants of the Jungle, now living rough in the surrounding woods. The title is a salute to the made-up name of one of the people he befriended, whose alias ’15 days’ might be an allusion to the all-too-brief period of respite since his latest temporary camp was destroyed but might also read as a rebuke of the interminable nature of the time he has been waiting in limbo, in the hope of a new and better life. Presented at Jerwood Space (2018) and Edge (Bath, 2018).
15 DAYS, 2018
Installation view of 15 days at Jerwood Space, 2018. Commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2018: ‘Unintended Consequences’, a collaboration between Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Film and Video Umbrella. Presented at Jerwood Space (2018) and Edge (Bath, 2018).