Forbidden Embrace

About this work

Forbidden Embrace is the third tableau in Paths You Walk, set in a lock-up off Butts Road, Walsall, in 1965. The composition is built on the visual grammar of the Pietà: a protective embrace between two people, both of them caught at a threshold.

The man is dark-skinned, run-down — heavy dark serge trousers, a collarless check shirt, a darned wool jumper. His hands are stained with permanent foundry grease. A fresh bruise colours one eye. He is a “protective bear” in Billy Dosanjh’s language — physically present, worn by a life he did not quite choose.

The woman is younger, fairer-skinned, modernised. Her 1965 A-line shift dress — vibrant paisley or Biba print — is cut from shimmering rayon, catching the single bare bulb more than his flat woolens. She has moved towards assimilation in ways he has not, or could not. Between them, the distance is visible in fabric.

In the shadows at the edge of the frame, a 1960s policeman in custodian helmet stands with a chrome torch. His beam cuts through the exhaust haze — solid, spectral, searching. It is unclear whether he has found them, or is still looking.

Themes

The image holds together multiple kinds of exile at once: the man is exiled from the country he came from (no economic return is possible), and partially from the country he now inhabits. The woman, by modernising, enacts a different kind of exile — from the culture her community preserves. The policeman is the third exile: the state’s gaze, cast into an intimate space where it does not belong.

The title is precise — the embrace is not merely romantic but transgressive in the eyes of the period: cross-class, possibly cross-caste, possibly cross-faith. It is forbidden by more than one framework.

Magic realism

The policeman’s chrome torch creates a solid spectral beam — a quality of light that should be physically impossible in the space. The woman’s shimmering dress catches and amplifies the single bulb. The man’s wounds glow with a wetness that reads as too fresh, too vivid — a wound that will not close.

Production team

• Art Director: Adam Tomlinson (Dead Man’s Shoes, This is England)
• Producer: Deborah Aston (Small Axe, Boiling Point)

Characters

The Indian Man (The Protective Bear); The Indian Woman (The Modernised); The Policeman (The Searcher).

Exhibition

Forbidden Embrace is exhibited at The New Art Gallery Walsall (Community Gallery), 6 March – 6 July 2026, and at partner community venues.

This work is part of the Paths You Walk HLF project and is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share and adapt for any purpose, including commercially, provided you credit: Billy Dosanjh / Reimagining Industrial Migratory Stories CIC. For high-resolution or print enquiries: reindmigs@gmail.com