Bhajan Hunjan was born to Indian parents in Nanyuki, British Kenya (now Kenya) in 1956. After arriving to England in 1975 to study Fine Art at the University of Reading, Hunjan both showed at and curated exhibitions, becoming a pioneering advocate for Asian women artists in Britain through the Panchayat collective.
Artist, curator and teacher, Bhajan Hunjan was born to Indian parents in Nanyuki, British Kenya (now Kenya) in 1956. Her mother made clothes and her grandfather was a carpenter, so as a child she was surrounded by creativity. After the end of British rule (1963), Kenya underwent an ‘Africanisation’ process in which there was a reattribution of citizenship. Hunjan decided to remain a British citizen and apply to universities in Britain, moving to England to study Fine Art at the University of Reading in 1975 (Perera, SADAA interview). After graduating in 1979, she enrolled in a postgraduate course in printmaking at the Slade School of Fine Art, while also studying ceramics part-time at the Central School of Art and Design (1979–81). Reflecting on her decision to study art, in 1983 Hunjan observed, ‘I went to art school to be educated, and once I was there I began to find out more about myself, about where I came from and to question myself through my work’ (Burman and Hunjan, 1983). She discovered the writings of psychoanalyst Carl Jung during her studies, and her ‘growing self-reflection on broad questions about identity and belonging evolved in tandem with an interest in the subconscious, dreams and the meanings of symbols’ (Correia, SADAA). She also worked at a refuge for South Asian women.
Between 1981 and 1982, Hunjan co-curated the exhibition Four Indian Women Artists with fellow exhibitor, Chila Kumari Burman, at the Indian Artists UK Gallery, London, in which she showed recent paintings, prints and ceramics. With titles such as Male and Female (1979) and Intimacy (1980), Hunjan employed forms that addressed themes of regeneration and decay, including seed pods, flora and fauna, ‘gesturing to questions of how one might find a place for oneself in such a vast and unknowable world’ (Correia, SADAA). One critic remarked that ‘Her work has maturity and through a subtle marriage of subject and technique, she manages to achieve a certain universality’ (Lloyd, 1982), while art historians Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock recognised the importance of the exhibition as the first to show the work of Black women artists exclusively (Parker and Pollock, 1987). Throughout the 1980s, Hunjan became increasingly interested in feminist politics, figurative painting and the experiences of Asian women (Ali, 1986). In this decade, she was involved with exhibitions focussing on Asian women artists. In 1986 she curated, organised and exhibited at Numaish: An Exhibition of 5 Asian Women’s Work at People’s Gallery, London and participated in Jagrati: An Exhibition of Work by Asian Women Artists at Greenwich Citizens Gallery. In 1990, her work was exhibited alongside Burman, Shanti Thomas and Jagjit Chuhan at In Focus at the Horizon Gallery; founded by the Indian Arts Council in 1987, until its demise in 1991, the gallery gave particular focus to artists of dual cultural identity, especially women of South Asian heritage. A year before the group show, Hunjan had held her own solo exhibition at Horizon (1989), Bhajan Hunjan: Recent Works. In the accompanying leaflet, Kenyan-born photographer Allan deSouza commented that her works are ‘at once familiar and elusive’, and that there ‘is an ever-present feeling that women’s lives, with all their restrictions and strengths are being scrutinised and empathised with’ (VADS). Hunjan also had a solo show at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth in the same year.
In 1988 Hunjan co-founded the Panchayat collective with Shaheen Merali, Symrath Patti, deSouza and Thomas, who all came together, after conversations at the Slade School of Art, to establish a collaborative and supportive network for South Asian arts practitioners in Britain. Meaning ‘group of five’, Panchayat took inspiration from systems of Indian village governance, acting as a local council with educational, curatorial and archival objectives. Panchayat organised exhibitions including Crossing Black Waters (1992), held at City Gallery, Leicester, touring to Cartwright Hall, Bradford and Oldham Art Gallery (Correia, 2019). Hunjan was involved in other group shows around this time, including Rich at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (1993). Hanjan also participated in Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966-1996 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Caribbean Cultural Center, New York City, USA (1997-1998). Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, she completed several public commissions, including eight street floorscapes in Leicester’s Cultural Quarter (2007–08). From 2018–19, she was Visiting Tutor in the Department of Architecture at Nottingham University. Between 2019 and 2020, she created works in response to Stephen Turner’s Exbury Egg at the Lakeside Centre, London, exhibited in the Egg in 2021.
Bhajan Hunjan lives and works in London. She has been an Arts Educator for Bow Arts and has been shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022–2024. Her works are held in UK public collections including Bradford Museums and Galleries, UCL Art Museum and the British Museum.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Bhajan Hunjan]
Publications related to [Bhajan Hunjan] in the Ben Uri Library