Over the course of four decades, Sutapa Biswas has developed a powerful language in her
practice that transcends questions of histories, time, and space. Working across a range of
disciplines including painting, drawing, film, video, and photography, her works possess a
stark but poetic resonance. Drawing from her training in art history as well as from literary
sources, film, and postcolonial writers and thinkers, her art is shaped by her interest in the
human condition, and how the epic historical narratives from across the globe collide with
the often-undocumented personal, everyday stories. Her practice questions the complexities
of racial and gendered power relations born out of tangled colonial histories - especially
regarding India and Europe. Her work converses creatively with for instance, the paintings
by Dutch seventeenth century artists such as Vermeer and Rembrandt, artists of the
seventeenth century moment of European encounter with and plundering of, but also
sometimes aesthetic exchange with, the rich and ancient cultures of the Indian subcontinent
and Asia. Like thread unraveling and raveling in fabric, Sutapa Biswas's practice weaves
conceptually across time and space, inviting the viewer to speculate on constructions of their
own identity in relation to the themes within her art.
Sutapa Biswas was born in Santiniketan, India, and educated in the UK. She graduated with
a BA in Fine Art with Art History from Leeds University (1985), where she also undertook a
yearlong subsidiary in the History and Philosophy of Science. This was followed by a
postgraduate degree at the Slade School of Art (1990) where she was taught by artists
Stuart Brisely, Susan Hiller, Helen Chadwick and Phyllida Barlow. She was later a research
student in Painting at the Royal College of Art (1995-98). She now lives and works in
London.
Sutapa Biswas participated in the emergence of the Black Arts Movement in Britain in the
mid-1980s being selected immediately following her graduation for the landmark exhibition
curated by Lubaina Himid, Thin Black Line at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in
1985 where she showed her monumental work, Housewives with Steak-knives (1983-1985),
acquired by curator Nima Poovaya-Smith for the collection of contemporary Asian artists at
Cartwright Hall, Museums Bradford, UK. While at the University of Leeds, Biswas performed
Kali, the basis of which was subsequently made into a video work, 1983-85 (Tate Collection,
accessioned 2017), in which she dressed as the black mythical Hindu deity Kali, created to
rid the world of evil. Biswas's performance included her undergraduate tutor the renowned
art historian Griselda Pollock, who stands in for the Western imperialist canon. Pollock has
noted that Biswas's presence on the course had a profound impact, leading the school in a
process of decolonization in its art historical curriculum.
Sutapa Biswas' works have been exhibited internationally. Reviewed widely including in the
New York Times and the Financial Times, in 2021-2022 she held major UK solo exhibitions
at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge University, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
and at Autograph, London. Other venues that have hosted her works include Tate Modern,
Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven), Newlyn Art Gallery and
The Exchange (Cornwall, UK), The British Museum, 'Mixed Bathing World 2015' Triennial
(Beppu, Japan), 6 th Havana Biennial, Neuberger Museum (New York), Art Gallery of Ontario
(Toronto), Melbourne International Arts Festival, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Arnofini
(Bristol), Iniva (London), and ICA (London). Previous solo exhibitions have been hosted by
Nara Roesler (Brazil), Iniva (UK touring), Douglas Cooley Gallery (Reed College, USA),
PlugIn Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, Canada) in collaboration with Locus+
(Newcastle Upon Tyne,UK), Leeds City Art Gallery and The Photographer's Gallery (UK).
She is a Fellow of The Banff Center for the Arts, Canada (1990 and 1992), has been a Visiting
Artist at Mills College, USA (1994), and is a European Photography Award 1994 nominee. In
2008, she was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Yale Centre for British Art and received
the Correnah W.Wright Endowment Fund and The National Endowment for the Arts Award.
Sutapa Biswas is a recipient of the Yale Center for British Art Visiting Scholars Award 2019-
20 (Yale University), and the Art Fund Award 2019 that made possible through the Moving
Image Fund for Museums, an ambitious new film, Lumen, 2021, co-commissioned with FVU
(London), Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Kettle's Yard, BALTIC and additionally supported by
Autograph and Arts Council England.
Her artworks are held in public collections including TATE, the Government Art Collection,
UK; Arts Council England, Reed Gallery, USA, Graves Gallery, Sheffield Museums and
Galleries, UK; Cartwright Hall, Bradford Museum and Art Gallery; Oldham Art Gallery;
Rochdale Art Gallery; Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, UK.