Billy Dosanjh's 'Paths You Take' Reimagines Sikh Life in 1960s Walsall

Billy Dosanjh's exhibition 'Paths You Take' at the New Art Gallery Walsall reconstructs the experiences of Sikh migrants in the Black Country through staged photographs, films, and installations. The centerpiece, 'After the Storm,' depicts an elderly Sikh man seeing snow for the first time in 1962-63, with furnace chimneys symbolizing the industrial labor Punjabi men performed. Dosanjh collected oral histories from first- and second-generation migrants, funded by a National Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and transformed them into images reminiscent of Edward Hopper or Jeff Wall. Works like 'PayDay' recreate a 1970s pub without a color bar, while 'Furnacemen' shows Punjabi workers under a white foreman. The artist's family appears: 'The Rainbow Cafe' references his father's business. Dosanjh, born in Smethwick in 1981, previously made the BBC film 'The Sikhs of Smethwick' (2016). He is developing similar projects for Stoke and Nottingham and a feature film about the 2005 Lozells and Handsworth race riots. The exhibition counters far-right tropes following the jailing of Vickrum Digwa for a stabbing with a ceremonial Sikh knife.