Chila Kumari Burman

Artworks

She was born in Bootle, near Liverpool. Her parents were Punjabi Hindus and they moved to the UK in the 1950s. This fact of biography has provided Burman with the means to critically examine the situation of South Asian women through herself, her family, her parents and her grandparents, as a second-generation artist of Pakistani origins in the UK. Her works – particularly her prints from the 1980s – were shown with other Black British artists and part of their political protest in the 1980s and 1990s against the police, against racism in British society and particularly stereotypes of South Asian women.

In the 1980s her work was shown in many black British artists shows from: Four Indian Women Artists (UK Artists Gallery, 1982); to Black Women Time Now (Battersea Arts Centre, London, 1983); The Thin Black Line (ICA, London, 1985); Black Art: New Directions (Stoke on Trent Museum and Art Gallery, 1989); and the feminist exhibition Along the Lines of Resistance (Rochdale Art Gallery and touring, 1989).

In the 1990s and 2000s her work has explored her family history and her father’s work as an ice-cream seller in Bootle (in her exhibitions Candy-Pop & Juicy Lucy, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich, London, 2006; Ice Cream and Magic, The Pump House, People’s History Museum, Manchester, 1997). In the 1990s, her work began to be shown internationally and she was in the Fifth Havana Biennale (1994); in Transforming the Crown (Studio Museum, Harlem and Bronx Museum, New York, 1997); Genders and Nations (with Shirin Neshat; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York State, 1998). Her retrospective touring show, 28 Positions in 34 Years, went to Camerawork, London; Liverpool Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; Oldham Art Gallery; Huddersfield Art Gallery; Street Level Gallery, Glasgow; Cardiff Technical College, Cardiff; Watermans Arts Centre, London. In the 2000s, she has increasingly shown between UK and the Asian sub-continent, taking part in key feminist and South Asian women artists’ exhibitions that explore the diaspora of South Asian identities: e.g. South Asian Women of the Diaspora (Queens Library, New York, 2001) and Text and Subtext (Earl-Lu Gallery, Lasalle-SIA University, Singapore, 2000) toured to Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia, in 2000 and Ostiasiataka Museet (Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities) Stockholm, in 2001, Sternersenmuseet, Oslo, Norway, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; X-ray Art Centre (Rui Wen Hua Yi Shu Zhong Xin), Beijing, China, in 2002 (exhibition catalogue).

Writing/Publications

In 1987, she wrote "There have always been Great Blackwomen Artists", exploring the situation of black women artists in relation to Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay "Why have there been no Great Women Artists?2 (first published in Women Artists Slide Library Journal no. 15 (February 1987) and then in Hilary Robinson (ed.), Visibly Female (London: Camden Press, 1987); also reproduced in Collective Black Women Writers, Charting the Journey: An Anthology on Black and Third World Writers (London: Sheba Publishers). Her work appeared on the bookjacket of Meera Syal's two novels on first publication: Anita and Me (Doubleday/Transworld, 1996); Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (Doubleday/Transworld, 1999) as well as the covers of James Proctor (ed.), Writing Black Britain, 1948-1998 (Manchester University Press, 2001); Roger Bromley (ed.), Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions (Edinburgh University Press, 2000); and Peter Childs and Patrick Williams, An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory (Prentice Hall, 1998).

Selected writings

Selected reviews, articles, broadcasts, publications on Chila Burman

Collections

Works by Chila Kumari Burman are in the following public and private collections: Alfredo Lam Centre, Havana, Cuba; Arts Council Collection Great Britain, London; BBC Bush House, London; Berge Collection, Spain; Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham; Sir Richard Branson; British Council, London; Cartwright Hall, Bradford; Devi Foundation, New Delhi; Linda Goodman, Johannesburg; Leicester New Walk Art Gallery, Leicester; New Art Gallery, Walsall; Rotary Club of Art, Chennai; Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Wellcome Trust, London.

Recognition

In 2012, she was artist in residence at ART CHENNAI and produced the exhibition pREpellers, curated by Kavita Balakrishnan for Art Chennai, Art and Soul gallery. In 2011–12 her residency at the Poplar HARCA centre, London concluded with a major solo exhibition in this local community centre. Her residency from February 2009 to March 2010 at the University of East London, was the result of a Leverhulme Award. For three years, January 2006 to December 2009, she was artist in residence at Villiers High School, Southall, London. From January 2004 to 2016, she has been a Board member at Richmix London (and was Vice-Chair, 2008–2010). In 1986, she took part in producing The Roundhouse Mural Project, Camden, London and in 1985 produced The Southall Black Resistance Mural, in collaboration with Keith Piper.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions:

Group exhibitions: