Sutapa Biswas | Lumen

With contributions by Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Sutapa Biswas, Alina Khakoo, Courtney J. Martin, Griselda Pollock, Amy Tobin and Alessandro Vincentelli.

Lumen is a new publication that accompanies the first solo exhibitions of the artist Sutapa Biswas in the UK since 2004. Born in Santiniketan, India, Biswas emigrated with her family to the UK in the 1960s. Taking the long histories of colonialism together with personal memories, Biswas’s artworks have meditated on migration and belonging. Her artworks have consistently interrogated the Western tradition, pushing past absences, exclusions and limited representations to make evident the entwined histories of culture and politics.

This book details Biswas’s career from its origins in the British 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 19 years, it includes two new conversations with the artist, two commissioned essays as well as a republication of Griselda Pollock’s seminal text on Biswas’s work, along with a Postface reflecting on their relationship in the decades since the essay’s original publication.

Sutapa Biswas will be exhibiting at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art from 26th June 2021 to 20th March 2022.