Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1957 Bootle, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1950

Other name/s: Chila Burman, Chila Kumari Burman, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Dr Chila Kumari Singh Burman, ਚਿਲਾ ਕੁਮਾਰੀ ਬਰਮਨ

Biography

Mixed-media artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman was born in 1957 into a Punjabi family in Bootle, England; her parents had emigrated from India to the UK in the 1950s. In 1979, she graduated in Fine Art (specialising in printmaking) from Leeds Polytechnic, progressing to a Master’s degree in printmaking at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1980–82). In 1982, she exhibited as a young artist in Between Two Cultures curated by Indian Arts UK at the Barbican’s Concourse gallery, as part of the Festival of India. She subsequently became a significant figure in the 1980s Black British Art movement, investigating the role of women, especially South Asian, through self-identity, cultural identity, diaspora, gender and representation, often taking a political stance. Influenced and inspired by pop-art, Burman reflected upon her childhood memories while addressing societal issues in her multi-layered kitsch-inspired pop artworks. Burman worked in a variety of media, including collage, photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture and film. In her artist statement, she described her work as capturing ‘the experiences and aesthetics of Asian femininity’ through ‘Challenging stereotypical assumptions of Asian women, my work is informed by popular culture, Bollywood, fashion, [and] found objects’ (Chila Kumari Burma website). The materials with which she experimented ranged between glittery bindis (the coloured dot worn on the centre of the forehead), stickers, wrappers, fashion accessories, sequins, cut-outs of emblems and Hindu deities, henna art and ice-cream cones. The theme of ice cream also featured heavily in her artwork – a reminder of Burman’s childhood in Liverpool where her father owned an ice cream van for over 30 years – bringing together memories of her childhood, while exploring the different strata of British society.

Burman is recognised as one of the significant Black British Artists of the 1980s. She has been included in several group exhibitions considered to be crucial to the movement, such as The Thin Black Line(s) at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London (1985) and Black Art: New Directions at the Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery (1989). She also organised Four Indian Women Artists, an exhibition at the IAUK Gallery, which art historians Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock identify as the first exhibition of black women artists in their book, Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–85. Burman is one of the first British Asian female artists to have a monograph published: Lynda Nead’s Chila Kumari Burman: Beyond Two Cultures (Kala Press, 1995).

Apart from her career as a visual artist, Burman has also authored a number of journal articles and book chapters. Her most notable piece was a response to Linda Nochlin’s ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, titled ‘There Have Always Been Great Black Women Artists’. In 2017, she received an honorary doctorate and fellowship from the University of Arts, London. Recent solo exhibitions and commissions include Chila Burman: Beyond Pop, Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2017), India Illuminated! for Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation, Science Museum (2017-18), and Neon Drama and Pearl Drops (the inaugural show at the newly reinstated Mansard Galleries, Heal's store, London, 2022). In 2020 her work was included in Ben Uri's online group exhibition Midnight's Family, celebrating 70 years of Indian artists in Britain, while later the same year the façade of the Tate Britain displayed her commission Remembering A Brave New World, in which multi-coloured neon lights, inspired by childhood visits to the Blackpool illuminations and her father’s ice-cream van, overwrote the museum’s traditional, neoclassical architecture and its historical connotations. In particular, she changed the figure of Britannia, a symbol of British imperialism, into Kali, the Hindu goddess of liberation and power. The following year, her kaleidoscopic installation Do you See Words in Rainbows? decorated Covent Garden market. Its centrepiece comprised a tiger made from white neon tubes located on a mirrored table and guarding the St. James' entrance to the historic Market Building and Piazza. Burman took particular inspiration from the tiger which adorned the top of her father's icecream van, and also from Aravand Adiga's 2008 Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger.

Chila Burman currently works from her studio in London. Chila Burman’s work is held in several UK public collections, including Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and the Wellcome Trust.

Related books

Rina Arya, Chila Kumari Burman: Shakti, Sexuality and Bindis (KT Press, 2012)
Richard Noyce, Printmaking at the Edge (London: A and C Black, 2006)
Chila Kumari Burman, ‘Storm in a D-Cup’, Artists Newsletter (2000)
Chila Kumari Burman, 'Here and There Between South Asia’s', New Writing from Canada and India, No. 27, (1999)
Lynda Nead, Chila Kumari Burman: Beyond Two Cultures (Kala Press, 1995)
Chila Kumari Burman, 'Enough is Enough', Feminist Art News, Vol. 4, No. 5, (1993)
Chila Kumari Burman, ‘Power to the People: Fear of a Black Community’, Feminist Art News, Vol. 3, No. 9, (1992)
Rozsika Parker, Griselda Pollock, Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement 1970–1985 (Pandora Pres, 1987)

Public collections

Related organisations

Leeds Polytechnic (student)
Slade School of Fine Art (student) (student)
University of Arts London (Honarary Doctorate) (Honarary Doctorate)
University of Arts London (Honarary Fellowship) (Honarary Fellowship)

Selected exhibitions

'Neon Drama and Pearl Drops', Mansard Galleries, Heal's store, London (2022)
'Remembering A Brave New World', Tate Britain (2020)
'Midnight’s Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain', benuri.org (2020)
'Tales of Valiant Queens', Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2018)
'Knock Knock: Humour in Contemporary Art', South London Gallery (2018)
'Illuminating India', Science Museum, London (2017-2018)
'The Past is Now and The British Empire', Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (2017-18)
'Coming Out - Sexuality, Gender, Identity', Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (2017-18)
British Council collection Exhibition, British Council Gallery, New Delhi (2016)
Points of View, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery (2003)
'A Missing History: The Other Story - Revisited', Aicon Gallery, London (2010)
'Chila Burman, SPACE NOW!', London (2008)
'28 Positions in 34 Years', Victoria and Albert Museum (1999)
'Ice Cream and Magic', People’s History Museum, Manchester (1997)
Black Art: New Directions’, Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery (1989)
'Along the Lines of Resistance: An Exhibition of Contemporary Feminist Art' at the Cooper Art Gallery, Barnsley (1988)
'The Thin Black Line(s)', Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1985)
'Indian Artist's, UK Festival of India, The Barbican, London (1982)
'Four Indian Women Artists', IAUK Gallery, London (1981)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Chila Burman]