(1966 - )
Graham Fagen (b. 1966, Glasgow) uses video, photography, sculpture and text to explore how personal and national identities are created and understood – and how they respond to their cultural contexts. Fagen, often referred to as one of the UK’s foremost contemporary artists, studied sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art, receiving his BFA in 1988 before going on to the Kent Institute of Art and Design to study Art and Architecture. He was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to represent Britain as official war artist for the conflict in Kosovo and has taught at various art colleges in the UK. Between 2017-19, his solo exhibition, ‘A Slave’s Lament’ a contemporary interpretation of the Scottish poet Robert Burns’s poem by that name travelled to galleries in the UK, Canada and the USA. The poem communicated the horrific realities of the transatlantic trafficking of people from Africa and made connections between the Caribbean and Scotland. Fagan represented Scotland at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and his works are in various national collections in the UK.
