Said Adrus was born to Gujarati Muslim parents in Kampala, Protectorate of Uganda, British Empire (now Uganda) in 1958. Following post-imperial displacement, Adrus moved to England in 1978 to study art. Part of the Black and Asian art movement in the 1980s, his multi-media work has consistently challenged the legacies of the British Empire.
Artist Said Adrus was born to Gujarati Muslim parents in Kampala, Protectorate of Uganda, British Empire (now Uganda) in 1958. Like other Asian artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Symrath Patti, Alnoor Mitha, Shaheen Merali and many others, Adrus’ family arrived in Africa as part of the British colonial project to import large amounts of South Asian labour to its East African possessions to assist with the building of railways and other industries at the turn of the twentieth century. Later, in the early 1970s, Idi Amin Dada, Uganda’s military dictator, dramatically ‘expelled’ many of the descendants of these indentured labourers, creating a large number of refugees and causing Adrus’ family to move to Switzerland, where they still live (Chambers, 2014). Adrus himself moved to England in 1978 to take a foundation course in Art and Design at Stourbridge College of Technology and Art. Completing his course in 1980, he then studied for a BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University from 1980–83. He later completed an MA at Goldsmith’s College, University of London from 1992–93.
Adrus was a significant presence in the Black and Asian arts movement in 1980s Britain; his artwork of the time described as computer paintings on canvas (Adrus, Akmut and Burman et al., 1993). In London in 1985 he showed alongside Sardul Gill and Gurminder Kaur Sikand in Three Asian Artists at the Commonwealth Institute and participated in Artists Against Apartheid at the Royal Festival Hall. The following year he gained a Gulbenkian Bursary in Community Arts. In 1988 he exhibited in Paintings by Said Adrus – Ceramics by Louise Block at the Horizon Gallery (established by the Indian Arts Council at 70 Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury to give particular focus to artists of dual cultural identity in its period of activity between 1987 and 1991) and in Black Art: Plotting the Course held at Oldham Art Gallery. Using image and text, as well as addressing the recurring theme of the self-portrait, Adrus’ work of this period spoke out against racism, discrimination and the interplay between imposed identities and one’s sense of self (Diaspora Artists). For instance, his piece, The Labelled Story (1989) depicted three mug-shot style heads side-by-side on canvas, inscribed with the graffiti: ‘Not Long Ago They Called us colored; then came the term Immigrant; and by 1992 somebody said Black European’. Speaking to the power dynamics of ascriptive identities, ethnicities and identity politics, the work sought to critique the State practices of surveillance and identification (Vakil, 2009).
Over time, Adrus turned increasingly to mixed- and multi-media ways of working. This was the case for Transition of Riches (1993) at Birmingham City Museum & Art Gallery, a group survey exhibition that was part of Britain’s first ever South Asian Contemporary Visual Arts Festival. There he hung unstretched canvases with computer-generated images and slogans such as ‘Seeing is it believing?’. Scattered on the floor were shabby, hessian sacks stamped with the British crown. By drawing the audience's attention to the way that canvas materials are produced by developing nations, Adrus exposed ‘a history of colonial oppression that still permeates every facet of Western culture’ (Guha, 1993). His works were shown in other large-scale, group exhibitions surveying Black and Asian artists, such as Eddie Chambers’ Us an’ Dem at the Storey Institute, Lancaster (1994) and Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996 in New York, USA at the Studio Museum Harlem, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Caribbean Cultural Center (1997–98).
Subsequently, moving image, screen and projection became a central part of Adrus' gallery work. A notable example is a long-term project developed over several exhibitions, taking as its starting point the Muslim Burial Ground in Woking, Surrey. The building was the initial burial site for Indian Army soldiers who, having fought for the British Empire during the First World War, died at the dedicated hospital established for them in Brighton Pavilion. It was left vacant in the 1960s after their bodies were exhumed and reinterred in the Military Cemetery at Brookwood. Adrus created moving image work related to this space to highlight ‘issues about War, Empire, and Islamic Architecture in the South East of England and notions of contemporary landscape in the Home Counties’ (Next We Change Earth exhibition catalogue, 2008). The Lost Pavilion project was screened at Tate Britain in London, and then in the substantial exhibition, Pavilion Recaptured, shown at Southampton Museum & Art Gallery the same year and The Lightbox, Woking in 2008. Other exhibitions related to the project include Said Adrus: Recaptured 2014 at New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2014–15), and Said Adrus: Lost Pavilion & Pavilion V at Autograph, London (2017). Said Adrus lives and works between London, England and Bern, Switzerland. His work is represented in UK public collections, including Bradford Museum & Art Gallery, Leicestershire Education Authority and Nottinghamshire County Council.