Chila Kumari Burman facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Chila Kumari Singh Burman MBE
Born	Bootle, England
Education	Southport College of Art Leeds Polytechnic University College London

Chila Kumari Singh Burman MBE is a British artist, celebrated for her radical feminist practice, which examines representation, gender and cultural identity. She works across a wide range of mediums including printmaking, drawing, painting, installation and film.

A significant figure in the Black British Art movement of the 1980s, Burman remains 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 (1995).

In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from University of the Arts London for her impact and recognised legacy as an international artist. In 2020 she was invited into the Art Workers' Guild as a Brother and in 2022, Burman was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to visual art.

Early life

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

Career

For over four decades, Burman's practice has been at the intersection of feminism, race and representation. A key figure in the British Black Arts movement in the 1980s, Burman has remained rooted in her understanding of the diverse nature of culture. Continually seeking to break stereotypes and emancipate the image of women, she often uses self-portraiture as a tool of empowerment and self-determination.

In the 1980s, her work was shown in a number of seminal group shows including Four Indian Women Artists (UK Artists Gallery, 1982); Black Women Time Now (Battersea Arts Centre, London, 1983); The Thin Black Line (ICA, London, 1985); Black Art: New Directions (Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery, 1989) and the feminist exhibition Along the Lines of Resistance (Rochdale Art Gallery and touring, 1989).

In the 1990s and 2000s, Burman's works more explicitly explored her family history, specifically her father's work as an ice-cream van man in Bootle (in her exhibitions Candy-Pop & Juicy Lucy, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich, London, 2006; Ice Cream and Magic, The Pump House, People's History Museum, Manchester, 1997). In the 1990s, her work was featured in the Fifth Havana Biennale (1994); Transforming the Crown (Studio Museum, Harlem and Bronx Museum, New York, 1997); Genders and Nations (with Shirin Neshat; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York State, 1998). 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. From the 2000s, her works were frequently shown internationally with notable group shows including South Asian Women of the Diaspora (Queens Library, New York, 2001) and Text and Subtext (Earl-Lu Gallery, Lasalle-SIA University, Singapore, 2000) toured to Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia, in 2000 and Ostiasiataka Museet (Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities) Stockholm, in 2001, Sternersenmuseet, Oslo, Norway, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; X-ray Art Centre (Rui Wen Hua Yi Shu Zhong Xin), Beijing, China, in 2002 (exhibition catalogue).

In 2018, Burman's survey show Tales of Valiant Queens was displayed at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Bringing together works made between the 1970s up to 2018. The show focused on themes of female empowerment, social and political activism, folk traditions and colonial legacy. The show included many iconic pieces alongside newer works. The show was reviewed as one that showed "how the race, gender and class barriers the Burman family encountered formed the political dynamism of her work".

In 2020, Burman was selected as the fourth artist to complete the Tate Britain Winter Commission. The resulting hugely popular installation Remembering A Brave New World, addressed the colonial history of Tate Britain and its Eurocentric position. Adorning the gallery façade with references to Indian mythology, popular culture, female empowerment, political activism and colonial legacy. It exposed a need for better informed conversations, and more effective strategies for tackling racism in the art world and wider society. Burman has since gone on to complete high profile light installation projects Do you see words in rainbows for Covent Garden’s historic market stall building, Liverpool Love of My Life for the Liverpool Town Hall, and Blackpool Light of My Life for Blackpool's Grade II listed Grundy Art Gallery. Burman has also featured in Sky Arts documentary special Statues Redressed and BBC2 documentary Art That Made Us, and has completed a number of notable commission pieces for brands including Netflix's White Tiger campaign and Byredo’s new fragrance Mumbai Noise.

In 2023, she was part of the jury for the John Moores Painting Prize, along with Alexis Harding, The White Pube, Marlene Smith and Yu Hong.

Writing and 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?" (first published in Women Artists Slide Library Journal no. 15 (February 1987), and then in Hilary Robinson (ed.), Visibly Female (London: Camden Press, 1987); also reproduced in Collective Black Women Writers, Charting the Journey: An Anthology on Black and Third World Writers (London: Sheba Publishers).

Her work appeared on the bookjacket of Meera Syal's two novels on first publication: Anita and Me (Doubleday/Transworld, 1996); Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (Doubleday/Transworld, 1999), as well as on the covers of James Proctor (ed.), Writing Black Britain, 1948–1998 (Manchester University Press, 2001); Roger Bromley (ed.), Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions (Edinburgh University Press, 2000); and Peter Childs and Patrick Williams, An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory (Prentice Hall, 1998).

Burman's work features in the 2018 exhibition publication No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990, edited by Beverley Mason and Margaret Busby.

Collections

Burman's work is collected worldwide, notably by Seattle Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Gallery, 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.

Honours and 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, Burman's 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.

Since January 2004, Burman has been a Trustee at Rich Mix, London (and was Vice-Chair, 2008–2010). 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.

Burman was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to visual art, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Burman is named on the BBC's 2023 list of 100 Women, which features 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world.