Shafique Uddin was born in Borobari, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1962. After moving to England at the age of nine, he became a self-taught artist, particularly inspired by his childhood memories from Borobari. His paintings have been shown in solo and group shows at the Whitechapel Gallery, Horizon Gallery, and Tate Britain, among other UK venues.
Painter Shafique Uddin was born in Borobari, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1962. In 1971 he moved to England at the age of nine amidst the South Asia Crisis, an internal uprising in Pakistan which resulted in a third war with India and a possible threat of global conflict. Following the Bangladesh Liberation War, East Pakistan emerged as the independent state of Bangladesh in December 1971. Uddin then moved to east London in 1976, aged 14. Mostly self-taught, he began painting in childhood and has been considered an ‘Outsider’ or ‘naïve’ artist whose work is ‘heavily autobiographical, drawing on childhood memories of Bangladesh or later recollections in Britain’ (Buckman, 2006). Inspired by the ‘art and crafts of his native village’, Uddin’s expressive and colourful work was encouraged by his secondary school art teacher in England, creating ‘twin poles of his art’ between ‘Borobari and his present life in London’ (Vann, 1999). Despite his later successes, he nevertheless had to work for many years in a sweat shop until he could paint full-time (Buckman, 2006; Vann, 1999).
Uddin’s first solo exhibition, Shafique Uddin, was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1979, when he was just 17. Later in the same year, he exhibited at the Whitechapel’s Arts of Bengal: The Heritage of Bangladesh and Eastern India, co-organised with the V&A and also shown at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1980. These shows were followed by a string of solo and group exhibitions, including Shafique Uddin at the Tower Hamlets Exhibition Circuit (1983) and City of London Polytechnic Group Show at the Grand Hall, Bath (1985). In 1986, Uddin was included amongst a cohort of artists from non-European backgrounds, including Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Gavin Jantjes, and Keith Piper, at the From Two Worlds group show at Whitechapel (Diaspora Artists). The following year, he was included in the group show, In Another World: Outsider Art from Europe & America, at Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. In 1988, Uddin held a solo show at London’s Horizon Gallery, an exhibition space created and organised as the visual arts wing of the Indian Arts Council. On the exhibition card, art critic Barry Schwabsky described his work as amalgamating ‘elements that appear quite childlike (the lumpy, sometimes almost insect-like personages, for instance) with others that are apparently quite educated, such as his extremely varied approach to colour, which ranges from apparent monochromes whose constituent marks turn out to incorporate subtle combinations of hue, to brilliant concerts of strongly contrasting tones. In each case, the resulting sense of light and space is both convincing and specific’ (VADS). In 1990 Uddin was included in the third instalment of the Gallery’s In Focus exhibition series, alongside Yashwant Mali, Sohail, and Shareena Hill (SADAA) and in The British Art Show, which toured between the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow and Hayward Gallery, London.
There was a hiatus in Uddin’s work in the early 1990s, during a period of depressive illness. ‘He then resumed painting with recovered and inspired vigour, only now his brushstrokes were on the whole larger, freer and looser than before’ (Vann, 1999). He subsequently exhibited in London in Obsessive Visions: Art Outside the Mainstream at England & Co (2001) and Outsider Art at Tate Britain (2005). In 2016, his works were shown in the Outsider Art Fair in Paris (Outside In).
Uddin continues to live and work in London. He and his wife, Pamela, have six children. His works are held in UK public collections including the Arts Council Collection; Bradford Museums and Galleries; and The New Art Gallery Walsall.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Shafique Uddin]
Publications related to [Shafique Uddin] in the Ben Uri Library