Art
Imran Perretta: the destructors
Solo exhibition and major new film commission by London-based artist Imran Perretta.
Drawing on the artist’s own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage, the film explores personal and collective experiences of marginalisation and oppression. Shot on location in Tower Hamlets, East London, the destructors reconsiders the figure of alienated male youth, exploring the complexities of ‘coming of age’ for young Muslim men living in the UK.
The film borrows its title from Graham Greene’s 1954 short story The Destructors. Set in post-war London, still recovering from the Blitz, Greene’s story follows a gang of youths who plot to tear down an old man’s house. In an era of desolation, hopelessness and austerity, it explores a generation of young men and their perceived capacity for destruction in a society marred by inequality, material devastation and social death (a sociological term used to describe the condition of people not accepted as fully human by wider society).
Perretta’s the destructors seeks to reflect on this narrative of post-war disaffection through the period following 9/11, a time characterised by state-sponsored Islamophobia and the perpetual ‘War on Terror’.
Sept 28-Dec 8, Tue-Sun 12-5pm. For more info, visit www.spikeisland.org.uk/programme/exhibitions/imran-perretta
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