जीवन से भी बड़ा

“Jeevan se Bhee Bada”

(Bigger Than Life)

Jaymin Patel

06/03/25 — 29/03/25

Opening Wednesday 5 March 5:30 pm

Creating story-tall cutouts to promote films has long been a tradition in India. Adorned with garlands and ceremoniously doused with milk, these monumental cutouts epitomize the ritualistic deification of film stars—a practice that mirrors traditional Hindu devotional rites, transforming film icons into quasi-divine figures.

Bigger Than Life re-imagines these familiar commercial cutouts and asks us to examine the impact of their design. Through a series of oil-painted cutouts of popular film protagonists, Jaymin Patel strips away the celebratory iconography to deconstruct the narratives of toxic masculinity, misogyny, colorism, and the adoration of criminality that permeate Indian cinema.

Accompanied by an essay by Kieran David Panui, Patel’s work considers how these cinematic myths reinforce socio-political hierarchies and cultural prejudices. Bigger Than Life invites viewers to question not only what we worship on screen but also the broader impact these myths have on collective identity and social conscience.

Jaymin Patel (b. 2002) is an Aotearoa-born artist of Indian heritage, currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He graduated from Whitcliffe College in 2023 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Patel is a member of the Auckland-based Pigeonhole Art Collective. Growing up as the firstborn of Indian parents, Patel navigates the complexities of belonging through painting and sculpture, using art as a means of self-discovery and storytelling. Inspired by Indian cinema’s rich narratives, pop culture, and the values of Hinduism passed down by family, Patel’s practice investigates the tensions and harmony between heritage, modernity, the sacred, and the secular.

Kieran David Panui (Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara, Ngāti Porou; b. 2005) is an Indigenous writer and researcher from Tāmaki Makaurau. He studied Art History and Philosophy at the University of Auckland. Panui is a member of the Auckland-based Pigeonhole Art Collective and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2024. He works in the Department of Computer Science as a Tutor of Research Methodologies. Currently, he is engaged with a research working group studying trans-disciplinary pedagogy in computer science and is also designing the Ukiyo-e Recognition Model (URM), a predictive AI tool used to recognize and date Japanese woodblock prints in the Ukiyo-e style.

Poster design by Harris Wilson

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