Lumen (circular mirror)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

This is one of two film stills in the Collection from Sutapa Biswas’ film Lumen, based on the abrupt uprooting of the artist’s family as they migrated from the UK to India when she was a young child. The female narrator in the film brings together the stories of three generations of women; the artist, her mother and her grandmother. She references the sea voyage that brought them across and the highs and lows they each faced in leaving behind a familiar cultural space behind to build a life in a new one. Biswas deploys the female gaze to investigate how such personal narratives intersect with larger historical ones and has a particular interest in colonial histories and their relation to issues of gender, race and class. In this still, we see two images of the female protagonist in the film, as she is framed in a mirror, symbolic perhaps of both cross generational experiences and the composite identities held by many migrants. The artist’s story of migration intersects with the maritime histories of the forced migration of people from Africa for slave labour across the Atlantic; British colonial trade; and the more recent post-colonial migration. Both the stills in the Collection show the rich interiors of the Red Lodge Museum in Bristol Museums, which resonates with historical associations to both the Dutch East India Company and Bristolians associated with the Slave Trade and the Abolition Movement.

Sutapa Biswas was born in Santiniketan, India and moved to the UK at the age of four. She graduated from Leeds University (1985), going on to a postgraduate degree at the Slade School of Art (1990) and the Royal College of Art (1996-98). Her work was recently exhibited in two retrospective exhibitions at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary art, Gateshead and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, both 2022-23). Her work was exhibited extensively in the 1980s and 1990s. She was a key figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s and her work was part of Thin Black Line at the Institute of Contemporary Art (1985) and included in numerous exhibitions throughout that decade and the 1990s. Group exhibitions including her work have been held at Tate Britain (2025 and 2023-2024); Drawing Room, London (2024). Works by Biswas are included in the Collections of Cartwright Hall, Bradford; Tate Britain, London and the University of Leeds Gallery.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

C-type photograph, print (as object name)

Artist

Sutapa Biswas (1962 - )

Title

Lumen (circular mirror)

Series Title

Lumen

Date

2021

Medium

C-type print

Dimensions

height: 92 cm; width: 135.2 cm; depth: 3.5 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, July 2022

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 27 July 2022

GAC number

19103