For more than twenty years, visual artist Chila Kumari Burman has worked experimentally across print, collage, mixed media, paint and photography with a predominantly autobiographical focus, exploring the construction of classed, gendered, sexualised and ‘raced' subjectivities.

 

Born in Liverpool to a Hindu-Punjabi family, Burman draws upon her personal and family memories and motifs from her history, utilising the physicality and pleasures of visual materials. Burman attended the Southport College of Art and Leeds Polytechnic (BA Hons, 1st Class). She has lived and worked in London since joining the Slade School of Fine Art (MA Printmaking) where she developed her focus on shifting formations of class, gender and ethnicities in the postcolonial context of contemporary Britain.

 

Using both fine art techniques and popular-cultural images, she generates powerful pictures of contemporary Asian feminisms. Informed by bold colour, form and line with direction from street politics, graffiti, Hindi film, fashion and found objects, Burman has confirmed her status as leading figure among UK Black and Asian artists.

 

As an internationally established artist, Burman has exhibited in countries including India, Pakistan, Syria, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Canada, Cuba, Spain, France, Poland, Ukraine and Sweden.

She is represented by 100 Tonson Gallery in Bangkok and Latitude 28 in New Delhi, and her new e-book "Shakti, Sexuality and Bindi Girls" by Rina Arya is available now, published by n. paradoxa international feminist arts journal.

 

www.chila-kumari-burman.co.uk

 

For more than twenty years, visual artist Chila Kumari Burman has worked experimentally across print, collage, mixed media, paint and photography with a predominantly autobiographical focus, exploring the construction of classed, gendered, sexualised and ‘raced' subjectivities.

 

Born in Liverpool to a Hindu-Punjabi family, Burman draws upon her personal and family memories and motifs from her history, utilising the physicality and pleasures of visual materials. Burman attended the Southport College of Art and Leeds Polytechnic (BA Hons, 1st Class). She has lived and worked in London since joining the Slade School of Fine Art (MA Printmaking) where she developed her focus on shifting formations of class, gender and ethnicities in the postcolonial context of contemporary Britain.

 

Using both fine art techniques and popular-cultural images, she generates powerful pictures of contemporary Asian feminisms. Informed by bold colour, form and line with direction from street politics, graffiti, Hindi film, fashion and found objects, Burman has confirmed her status as leading figure among UK Black and Asian artists.

 

As an internationally established artist, Burman has exhibited in countries including India, Pakistan, Syria, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Canada, Cuba, Spain, France, Poland, Ukraine and Sweden.

For a comprehensive list of solo and group exhibitions, please click here.

 She is represented by 100 Tonson Gallery in Bangkok and Latitude 28 in New Delhi, and her new e-book "Shakti, Sexuality and Bindi Girls" by Rina Arya is available now, published by n. paradoxa international feminist arts journal.

Glossary

  • Collage

    The two-dimensional form of assemblage made by affixing paper, card, photographs, fabric and other objects to a flat surface. It is often combined with painting and drawing techniques. This technique was first introduced by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1912 during their phase of synthetic cubism.

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • Film

    A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.