Biswas-Rodgers, S., 2021.

Lumen: Sutapa Biswas

Solo Exhibition.

LUMEN
SUTAPA BISWAS 26 JUNE 2021 - 20 MARCH 2022

Sutapa Biswas works across a wide range of media including drawing, painting, photography, moving image, installation and performance. This exhibition at BALTIC spans Biswas's extensive career, from her early photographic series Synapse I (1987-92) to the major new film commission, 'Lumen' (2021). Since the early 1980s, Biswas's works have explored themes of time and space and the human condition through a de-colonial and feminist lens, engaging with oral histories, literature, poetry and art history. Visual theorist Griselda Pollock said that it was Biswas who 'forced us all to acknowledge the Eurocentric limits of the discourses within which we practise'.

The works in the exhibition investigate deeply personal and historical narratives and are shaped by Biswas's lived experience as a British-Indian woman. They are connected by recurring themes of motherhood, migration, memory and loss, and ideas of belonging and desire. The works share a poetic sensibility, inviting us to reflect on our own personal histories and family relationships. They also tell unsettling truths, tracing the diasporic experience and confronting the colonial histories of the British Empire.

This exhibition has been developed in partnership with Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge.
The film Lumen (2021) has been co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art with Art Fund support through the Moving Image Fund for Museums. This programme is made possible thanks to Thomas Dane Gallery and a group of private galleries and individuals. The commission has been additionally supported by Autograph. Supported by Arts Council England.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication designed by Kajsa Ståhl of Åbäke and co-published with Kettle's Yard. The publication is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.