“Housewives with Steak-knives also places in the hands of the powerful female figure from the Hindu pantheon, Kali, who delivers justice to evil-doers, with raised sword, a flag on which the artist had pasted an image by a 17th century Italian painter, Artemisia Gentileschi of a Biblical character Judith who deploys her sword against a foreign aggressor. Through her art, Biswas is interested in telling spatial stories that explore the many ways in which the epic narratives of history collide with the everyday and often undocumented oral histories. Creatively entwining her doubled aesthetic and cultural traditions as Indian and British, Biswas freely roams across the whole history of Western art, as fascinated by stillness and time in Dutch artist Vermeer’s painting as by American Edward Hopper’s enigmatic, anomic modern urban characters. Biswas equally infiltrates contemporary art with her deep engagement with Indian monuments and sculptures set alongside her love and understanding of the black and white cinema of for example, the work of Satyajit Ray and Federico Fellini.” Pollock explains.

Over a forty-year career, Biswas has employed a range of materials – including, but not limited to, pastel and drawing, performance, video, photography, watercolour, and “full-screen cinematic film, ranging from the intimate to the monumental. She makes works of seductively stunning visual beauty and breathtaking aesthetic inventiveness to prompt us to reflect on the still-present legacies of shocking historical realities that reshaped the Indian subcontinent’s destiny when so many European adventurers arrived to extract its wealth (Lumen) and to study exotic plants, flowers and fauna.” Pollock tells The Wick.

“Her work reframes that past through the lens of a contemporary child transplanted under political exile to England in the 1960s as Britain unevenly confronted its own past and, at times, still violently inhospitable present. Using the beauty of her deep artistic intelligence, Sutapa Biswas seduces us into ethical reflection with deep personal affects. She reclaims the female body as an alphabet for memory (Synapse) and borrows a Shakespearean voice to honour her mother’s forced exile from India and her own retracing of that journey with a sharpened eye made tender with love and longing (Lumen).”

Biswas herself adds that “I’m influenced by a range of sources including poetry, art history – which I studied as an undergraduate, film and literature. My works focuses on the human condition, and I’m especially interested in exploring the ways in which the larger historical narratives from across the globe collide with the often-undocumented personal stories. My practice questions the complexities of racial and gendered power relations born out of tangled colonial histories – especially, but not exclusively, regarding India and Europe. Often incorporating archival material from museum collections, like fabric raveling and unraveling, my desire is to weave these different elements conceptually across time, histories and space within my works.”

Biswas’ galvanising and generous work continues – a few major projects are in development, the artist notes, including a forthcoming collaboration with the Government Art Collection, and Norwich University of the Arts, UK where she is currently the East Gallery Fellow. Biswas returns to Tate Britain, imminently too – with the major upcoming survey, The 80s: Photographing Britain, due to open on 21 November. Several large-scale, handprinted photographic works from her series Synapse will be displayed. The works return to London decades after they were first presented to the public at Biswas’ solo exhibition in 1992 at the Photographer’s Gallery – proof of her perennial, unfading relevance and the timelessness of her themes. No doubt Biswas’ works will continue to find their way into the hearts and minds of new audiences for generations to come. As Pollock has it: “a history painter and a visual poet, Biswas, like all great artists, takes us to new places and always surprises us with her new destinations.”