Saranjit Birdi was born in Punjab, India in 1960. His family moved to the UK in 1965, after which he trained and worked as an architect between 1982 and 2004. Birdi subsequently studied Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art (2009) and Goldsmith's University (2015), establishing a second career as a prominent performance artist based in Birmingham, exhibiting and performing widely, and working in art-science collaborations.
Artist Saranjit Birdi was born in Punjab, India in 1960. His family moved to the UK in 1965. After training at the University of Bristol between 1982 and 1987, and received an MA in Interior Design and Information Technology at UCE Birmingham (now Birmingham City University) in 1998, Birdi worked as a practicing architect until 2004. However, in parallel with his former profession, Birdi played jazz percussion for jazz-fusion bands, and taught and performed dance. This combined arts practice impacted his subsequent work experimenting with drawing, painting, music, dance and poetry. His father Surjit Singh Birdi, an established Punjabi writer and poet, was another ‘guiding light’ (Artist’s Website). Birdi continued his arts education in the UK, receiving an MA in Fine Art from Birmingham School of Art, Birmingham City University (2009) and a second MA in Fine Art from Goldsmith’s University, London (2015).
Since 2004, Birdi has exhibited and performed widely. He exhibited with the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in Follow (2004) and Expansions (2005). In 2005 he produced Drum Light, a visual series of ‘rhythm images’ displayed on the BBC Big Screen in Chamberlain Square, Birmingham city centre (BBC, 2005). Supported by Arts Council England, Birdi’s research after 2007 has led to him working in arts-in-health and with disabled people in rehabilitation through drawing. This was followed by art-science collaborations with the University of Birmingham’s School of Bioscience on innovating learning methods, and with the School of Psychology working with stroke survivors. In 2010 he was involved in several exhibitions related to these themes: his video Interrogation was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, following its presentation at the Wolverhampton Open (2008); Thisability, which built on his work on drawing and rehabilitation, was shown at Solihull Arts Complex, Birmingham, then in a group exhibition Making Sense at Shire Hall Gallery, Stafford; for the group show Sur-Face at The Works Gallery, Birmingham, he produced a life-size action-painting installation combining dance, movement and mark-making.
These explorations into using the whole body as a drawing tool has been explored in Birdi’s ongoing Mapping Bones series since 2017, for which he has performed improvisational collaborations with musicians and poets to produce drawings, paintings and collages exploring human migration across the earth (Artist’s Website). The series has developed through exhibitions: Mapping Bones 1 at ORT Gallery, Birmingham (2018); Mapping Bones 2 – Bones and Buildings at 1000 Trades Bar, Birmingham (2018–19); Mapping Bones 4 – They Cross Oceans at Medicine Bakery Gallery, Birmingham (2019); and Mapping Bones 5 – Remembrance at Exeter Street Hall, Brighton (2019). In 2022 Birdi produced Bombed: A Trilogy at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, a project initially devised after being awarded an International Artists Development Fund bursary (British Council and Arts Council) to travel to Delhi, India and Dresden, Germany to further expand his practice in 2016. The performance combined new and retrospective works themed around bombing, war and conflict resolution (Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, YouTube, 2022).
Birdi has taught his course, ‘Painting to Music’ at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, delivered workshops for disability groups and instructed ‘fitness to music’ and wellbeing classes. He has also produced several public art commissions, including a screen design for the Jubilee 2 Health and Leisure Centre swimming pool, Newcastle-under-Lyme (2012), cycle stands for Wyre Forest Leisure Centre, Kidderminster (2016) and The Last Leaf installation for Active Arts, Castle Vale and the Pioneer Group, Birmingham (2018). Saranjit Birdi lives and works in Birmingham, England. In the UK public domain, his work can be found in the collection of Highley Parish Council and University of Reading.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Saranjit Birdi]
Publications related to [Saranjit Birdi] in the Ben Uri Library