Chila Kumari Burman


Dr. Chila Kumari Burman is an iconic British artist. A significant figure in the Black British Art movement of the 1980s, Burman was one of the first British Asian female artists to have a monograph written about her work: Lynda Nead’s Chila Kumari Burman: Beyond Two Cultures, and a second monograph by Nead was published in 2012.
In 2018, Burman received an honorary doctorate from University of the Arts London for her impact and recognised legacy as a British and International artist. In 2020, Burman was selected into the Art Workers Guild as a Brother.

Early life

Born in Bootle, near Liverpool, Burman attended the Southport College of Art, the Leeds Polytechnic and Slade School of Fine Art, where she graduated in 1982. 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.

Career

Working across printmaking, painting, collage, film and photography, her work over four decades has been at the intersection of feminism, race and representation as activism and artwork. 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 2018, Burman's contribution to British Art was recognised by the University of the Arts London, receiving an honorary doctorate alongside others such as Mike Nelson, Gary Younge and Theaster Gates.
In the 1980s her work was shown in many black British artists shows from: Four Indian Women Artists ; to Black Women Time Now ; The Thin Black Line ; Black Art: New Directions ; and the feminist exhibition Along the Lines of Resistance.
In the 1990s and 2000s she and her work has explored her family history and her father’s work as an ice-cream seller in Bootle. In the 1990s, her work began to be shown internationally and she was in the Fifth Havana Biennale ; in Transforming the Crown ; Genders and Nations. 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 and Text and Subtext toured to Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia, in 2000 and Ostiasiataka Museet Stockholm, in 2001, Sternersenmuseet, Oslo, Norway, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; X-ray Art Centre, Beijing, China, in 2002.
In 2018, Burman's survey show, Tales of Valiant Queens, was displayed at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. It brought together works made between the 1970s up to 2018, focusing on themes of female empowerment, social and political activism, folk traditions and colonial legacies. The show included many iconic pieces and new work, where it was reviewed as an exhibition that 'reflects her understanding of how contemporary British visual culture remains invested in the legacy of Empire, and shows how regressive definitions of identity have gone unchallenged in post-colonial Britain.

Writing/Publications

Alongside visual arts, Burman has written extensively on feminism, race, art and activism. 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?" and then in Hilary Robinson, Visibly Female ; also reproduced in Collective Black Women Writers, Charting the Journey: An Anthology on Black and Third World Writers.
Her work appeared on the bookjacket of Meera Syal's two novels on first publication: Anita and Me ; Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee, as well as on the covers of James Proctor, Writing Black Britain, 1948-1998 ; Roger Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions ; and Peter Childs and Patrick Williams, An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory.
Burman's work features in the 2018 exhibition publication , edited by Beverley Mason and Margaret Busby.

Selected writings

Burman's work is collected worldwide, notably by Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Wellcome Trust, Science Museum, Arts Council Collection and the British Council in London; Museum and Art Gallery in Birmingham; Sir Richard Branson; Cartwright Hall in Bradford; Devi Foundation in New Delhi; Linda Goodman in Johannesburg; New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester; New Art Gallery in Walsall; Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

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. 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: