Sutapa Biswas: Lumen

Lumen, a survey of the four-decade career of British-Indian artist Sutapa Biswas, accompanies two solo exhibitions of the artists work held in 202122. Biswas emigrated from India to the UK with her family in the 1960s. Taking the long histories of colonialism together with personal memories, Biswass art meditates on questions of migration, identity and belonging. Her practice has consistently interrogated Western tradition and discourse, pushing past absences, exclusions and limited representations to make evident the entwined histories of culture and politics.

This publication details Biswass career from its origins in the Black Arts Movement in the 1980s to her important photographic installations of the 1990s and her subsequent major moving-image works, including her newly commissioned film Lumen. The first substantial publication on the artist in over 17 years, it features two new conversations with the artist and two commissioned essays. It also includes a republication of Griselda Pollocks important text on Biswass work, along with a postface reflecting on their relationship in the decades since the essays original publication.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition: Sutapa Biswas: Lumen BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (26 June 202122 March 2022) and Kettles Yard, University of Cambridge (16 October 202130 January 2022).