KS4 (ENG), KS4 (NI), CfE L4 (SCO), KS4 (WAL), KS5 (ENG), KS5 (NI), CfE Sen. (SCO), KS5 (WAL)
Protest and civil unrest, Empire and colonialism, Objects and symbols, Family, Jewellery, hats and accessories
Who is Chila Kumari Singh Burman and how does she use imagery and objects to address themes including, identity, representation and politics?
Chila Kumari Singh Burman's richly layered mixed-media artworks reflect on themes ranging from British society and colonial history to Bollywood culture, family memories, and the representation of women. This resource takes an in-depth look at the techniques and processes she uses and the themes she explores.
Use it to:
This Art and Design resource is written for KS 4 and 5 / CfE Levels 4 and senior phase students, students in Further and Higher Education and lifelong learners. Teachers could also use and adapt sections of the resource for KS 3 / CfE level 3 students.
This resource can be used for individual study and reflection or as a reference for teachers developing lesson plans.
It introduces the artist's work and offers discussion points and activities that can be used together or as individual components to integrate into your own scheme of work.
Chila Kumari Singh Burman was born in 1957 in Liverpool. Her parents moved to the UK from Punjab in Northern India in the mid-1950s. Her family history and Indian heritage are an important inspiration for Burman.
Burman studied printmaking at Leeds Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art in London. Since the 1980s she has worked across a range of media including printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, video and installation.
Chila with her 2020 installation 'Remembering a Brave New World' at Tate Britain
She has described her art as 'fun, playful, cheeky, magical journeys that are happy and delightful'. But she also addresses important themes in her work. A significant figure in the Black British Art movement of the 1980s along with artists such as Sonia Boyce, Claudette Johnson and Eddie Chambers, Burman helped bring issues relating to racism, colonialism, and gender and cultural representation to the attention of the contemporary art world and wider society.
'I use collage to open up possibilities. I create images, turn them into prints and then add metallic acrylic paint, fluorescent poster paints, felt tip pens, glitter, crayons, spray paint and pastels'.
Burman trained as a printmaker. While still a student she experimented with techniques, often combining different media and processes within the same print to create richly layered images.
This early experimentation and willingness to push traditional techniques in printmaking led her to make vibrant and layered mixed-media artworks that combine a range of materials. (The term 'mixed media' is used to describe art that is made using more than one medium or material.) She often uses non-traditional materials and is drawn to sparkly, shiny materials such as glitter, jewellery, and fluorescent and metallic paint which she describes as her 'junk treasures'.
More recently Burman has created large installations using neon lights. In 2020 she covered the façade of Tate Britain with lights that outlined personal motifs relating to her family history and identity, figures from Hindu religion and mythology, and text slogans.
Remembering a Brave New World
2020, installation by Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957) at Tate Britain
In this Tate video, Chila Kumari Singh Burman takes us on a tour of her studio and shows us 'where the magic happens!'.
Peep into boxes of glittering materials, find out about her processes, and hear how she sees the role of an artist as making order from chaos.
Everyday inspiration – 'Asian Pop artist'
'High art meets popular culture – I think that's essentially what I'm interested in.'
Burman's use of everyday objects such as glitter and jewellery, as well as imagery from popular culture, has led to her being described as an 'Asian Pop artist'.
Spoon Painting
2021, artwork by Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957)
'Popular culture' refers to the ideas, images and culture that people interact with every day, often through mass media. Fashion, TV, mainstream films and pop music are all examples of popular culture. Pop art was an art movement that developed in the 1950s and 1960s when artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Pauline Boty started to use imagery from popular culture. Posters, comic books and advertising graphics all found their way into Pop artists' work.
Autobiography (imagery and colour)
Remembering a Brave New World
2020, installation by Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957) at Tate Britain
Much of the imagery we see in Burman's work is inspired by memories from her childhood.
Ice cream
When her family moved to the UK in the 1950s, her father, who was a tailor by trade, had difficulty finding employment. He bought an ice cream van and built a successful business selling ice creams. Ice cream and ice cream vans feature as a motif in many of Burman's artworks.
Eat Me Now (2013) is a giant sculpture of ice cream in a cone. It is decorated with glitter, bindis, peacock feathers and figures from Hindu mythology and religion. As well as being a fun, vibrant sculpture, the sculpture pays homage to her father and the family's survival when they first moved to England. It becomes a powerful symbol reflecting Burman's identity.
Cornet – Eat Me Now
2012, sculpture by Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957)
Tigers
Her father's ice cream van had a tiger on top of it and Burman has also adopted the tiger as a symbol reflecting her personal history (as well as her Indian heritage – the tiger is the national animal of India). A tiger appears in her 2020 neon light installation at Tate Britain, Remembering a Brave New World, as well as in many of her other artworks.
Chila with her tiger artwork
Colour
Burman credits her childhood and her Indian heritage as inspiring her use of vibrant colour. Her father's van and the local Hindu temple were full of colour. She has also suggested that the 'OTT colour' of Bollywood films, enjoyed by her family every Sunday, is also embedded in her approach to colour.
Cultural identity
Burman describes herself as a Punjabi Liverpudlian. Her work references both her Indian cultural heritage and the Western culture she grew up in. As a child, she went regularly to the temple with her family and watched Bollywood films, but she also went dancing every Saturday evening in the local Irish pub.
'I'd go home [from school] and get out of my uniform, speak in Punjabi and enter an Indian world. When I'd step out on the streets to play, it was again an English world. So school was very English, and home was very Indian.'
A trip to India before she went to art college brought her Indian heritage to the forefront, and imagery and symbols from Indian culture became an important part of her work. However, she doesn't see herself as exploring her Indian heritage but sees this heritage as integral to who she is and how she works.
The trip also politicised her, making her more aware of India's history and Britain's role as a colonial power. For her light installation at Tate Britain, she included figures relating to the proud history and mythology of India to counter, as she explained, 'the awful things the British did in India'. Indian goddesses such as Lakshmi and feminist icon Lakshmi Bai/Jhansi Ki Rani, who once ruled the princely state of Jhansi, are incorporated into the installation. The statue of Britannia, which stands at the top of the neoclassical façade of the gallery, is covered with the powerful and threatening Hindu goddess Kali.
Remembering a Brave New World
2020, installation by Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957) at Tate Britain
Gender and representation
Burman was a feminist from a young age, (she had a poster of the Black American feminist and political activist Angela Davis on her wall as a teenager). Her interest in women's rights and the representation of women developed while she was at art college.
Chila as a student at Leeds Polytechnic in 1979
While at college she set up the first Asian women's refuge. She also joined a women's collective which produced a magazine called Mukti for South and East Asian women. Mukti helped to shape the development of black feminist theory. It focused on the interconnected nature of gender, race and class oppression.
She has described her work as having a 'feminine quality' but one that is dynamic. Jewellery, false eyelashes, makeup and bindis have all featured in her art. (Bindis are coloured dots or stickers worn in the centre of the forehead in the Hindu, Sikh and Jain religions and traditionally signify married women.)
'I'm reworking girly things ... I'm taking the mickey out of the way women are supposed to be wearing these things so I'm reappropriating it and mashing it up.'
Chila with bindis
Self-portraits and subverting stereotypes
Burman uses self-portraiture to address the problematic representation of women, especially, South Asian women and their histories. She often wears bindis in self-portraits, placed randomly over her face and body, or tightly packed to cover areas of skin, both decorating and drawing attention to her body. Using bindis in this way she challenges conventional stereotypes of South Asian women and presents herself as a confident, sexual and sexualised woman. The bindis also become a form of armour. In a video from 2020 called Armour, she sticks bindis on her arm so closely together they give the impression of colourful armour plating.
'I never use them like you're meant to. It's like an innate thing where I do the things that are the opposite. I hardly ever wear bindis where you are supposed to. I would say I use them in my work slightly subversively.'
Auto-Portrait is a self-portrait. Chila Kumari Singh Burman, wearing a hat, looks out of the portrait with her face resting on her hands. Rays of light radiate from the top of her head. The portrait is made up of smaller images repeated multiple times. Although the smaller images disrupt the portrait, Burman's eyes remain clear and look steadily out, directly engaging the viewer. The surface of the portrait is decorated with plastic sticky gemstones.
Use the questions below to analyse and reflect on the artwork. Then find out more in the 'About the artwork' section below.
First impressions …
Look closer at the artwork …
Media and techniques …
Message and meaning …
- The portrait is bold and eye-catching.
- The smaller images make it seem abstracted.
- The portrait has a photographic quality.
- Its bold style makes it appear like a poster, perhaps reminding us of Pop art. (The small photographs overlaid with bright colours are reminiscent of Andy Warhol's screenprints of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe.)
- It is also reminiscent of religious portraits or icons – the rays of light radiating from Burman's head add to this impression.
- The smaller images that make up the face make it look pixelated. This suggests modern technology and brings the traditional idea of a self-portrait bang up to date.
Describe Chila Kumari Singh Burman's pose and expression. How does she come across in the portrait?
- Burman is sitting with her chin resting on her hands.
- She is looking out of the portrait and at us, engaging us with a slight smile.
- Her pose and expression suggest confidence and also reflection.
What are the figures in the tiny images wearing? Who do you think they represent?
- The smaller pictures which make up the portrait are photographs of Burman herself.
- In each tiny photograph she is dressed as different people, styled with distinct, hair, clothing and makeup. Each portrait represents a different type of woman.
Can you spot anything else she has added to the portrait?
- Looking closely, we can just about make out that Burman has added gems and jewellery to the surface of the print.
- Auto-Portrait is a mosaic of tiny photographs of Burman created using photographs and digital editing tools.
- She started the artwork in 1995 and it took her twelve years to make!
- She altered each of the tiny portrait photographs to make the colours bolder and the shapes simpler. (In her print 28 Positions in 34 years she has similarly altered photographic self-portraits to create vibrant, bold images.)
- She added the tiny photographs to the main portrait of herself using photo editing tools to superimpose the images over the main portrait.
- She blacked out the background of the portrait so that we focus on her face and pose.
- After printing the image to create a physical digital print, she added sticky plastic gemstones to embellish its surface.
- Auto-Portrait is many self-portraits and one at the same time.
- It explores the idea that we are all multi-faceted as individuals.
- It conveys the strength and depth of Burman's sense of self that extends far beyond a one-dimensional stereotypical viewpoint.
- It also challenges traditional ideas and preconceptions of what an Asian woman can or should be.
- Burman also perhaps questions the perception that photography captures the truth.
- Burman wants us to think about the ways that women are photographed or painted in portraits – and who gets to decide how they are portrayed.
- Her confident pose and expression suggest that she is very much in control of her own image.
- Her direct gaze could perhaps be seen as confrontational. She seems to be challenging us as viewers to examine and rethink our perceptions of Asian women.
Burman made If There is No Struggle There is No Progress in 1981 while she was a student at Slade School of Art in London. It is from her Riot Series of prints developed in response to unrest that erupted across the country as a reaction against the policies of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.
If There is No Struggle, There is No Progress - Uprisings
(Riot Series)
1981
Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957)
Use the questions below to analyse and reflect on the artwork. Then find out more in the 'About the artwork' section below.
First impressions …
Look closer at the artwork …
Message and meaning …
Media and techniques …
- The print's simple bold colours, shapes and marks make it immediately impactful.
- The expressive mark-making makes it look spontaneous and quite messy.
- At first, it appears abstract, but on closer look, we can make out figures and text.
- The colours and marks create a mood of emotion, fear and anger.
What can you see?
- There are layers of mark-making, imagery and texts.
- An expressive swathe of black ink and the black marks and smudges cover red photographic images and typed text.
Does the style remind you of anything?
- These images and texts, along with orderly square boxes, suggest the layout of a newspaper.
- The large black shape looks like a stain and suggests smoke. It could also suggest a map.
- Hand-written text and a hand-drawn figure, wearing a helmet and mask, have been added in white paint over the red and black marks. They look a bit like doodles or graffiti.
What does the text say?
- The text includes place names and dates.
- There are also political slogans such as 'the unpleasant features of Imperialism', '? Justice no more' and 'Equal rights'.
- In the top centre of the print, in red ink is written 'uprisings, summer '81' which reads like a newspaper headline, and provides us with a clue about print's subject.
What is the print about?
- The print is Burman's response to the uprisings in 1981.
- A series of uprisings were sparked in Liverpool when police conducted a 'stop and search' on a local man named Leroy Cooper. This led to demonstrations and friction between the police and the community, referenced in the media as 'Toxteth riots'.
- Other prints in her Riot Series include images of newspaper articles about the unrest.
How has Burman used imagery and text?
- Other prints in the series also include photographs of policemen wearing riot gear and gas masks. This provides us with a source for the white line drawing of a figure in a mask.
- The place names added in white paint – Chapeltown, Birmingham, Liverpool – are locations of uprisings and civil unrest.
- The map-like look of the print suggests the spread of the uprisings to locations around the country.
How does the imagery fit in with what you know about Burman?
- The inclusion of Liverpool is especially poignant as Burman's hometown. This also fits in with her use of autobiography in her work.
- Burman was studying in London when the rioting took place. Engaging with the subject in her print may have been a way of making sense of what was happening in Liverpool when she felt so far away.
- Responding to injustices within society is a major theme in Burman's work and life – whether she highlights women's rights, criticises racist representations or examines colonial history.
- The title of the print – If There is No Struggle, There is No Progress – implies that Burman sympathises with the uprising and acknowledges the importance of making your voice heard to change things for the better.
What techniques has Chila Kumari Singh Burman used to create the artwork?
- Burman has combined printmaking techniques etching and lithography.
- She has used a form of etching called photo etching for the typed text and photos. Photo etching uses ultraviolet light to fix a photographic image onto a sheet of metal. Chemicals (etching solution) are then used to etch the shape into the metal.
- She has used lithography for the expressive marks added on top of the etched newspaper. Lithography involves drawing or painting onto a stone or metal plate with an oily crayon or medium. Water is then applied to the surface of the plate. When an oil-based printing ink is rolled onto the plate, it is repelled by the water and only sticks to the oily drawn or painted surfaces. It is these marks that are transferred to the paper.
- Burman has then hand-drawn text and images onto the print using white paint.
What colours has she used, and why do you think she chose these colours?
- By using a limited range of colours – black, red and white – she ensures the image is simple, punchy and powerful.
- Red and black create an atmosphere of violence and anger. Red suggests blood and the black swathe which dominates the print looks like smoke.
- The colours also suggest those often used in newspaper publishing – reflecting the newsworthy nature of the uprisings she addresses and the way they were reported.
How has she used mark-making, and what is the impact of this?
- The juxtaposed techniques and range of mark-making create a rich layering of imagery and meaning.
- The graphic quality of the photo-etched imagery, contrasts with the expressive marks, hand-written slogans and line drawings.
- This perhaps reflects the contrast between the detached formal reporting of the events in the newspapers and the emotions, anger and fear felt by the people and communities involved in the protests.
This mixed-media collage was one of 29 artworks made by Chila Kumari Singh Burman for the Science Museum as part of a commission for its Illuminating India season in 2017–2018.
It shows the Hindu goddess Parvati, who sometimes manifests as Saraswati, goddess of learning (including wisdom and science) reflecting the nature of the Museum's focus.
Use the questions below to analyse and reflect on the artwork. Then find out more in the 'About the artwork' section below.
First impressions ...
Look closer at the artwork …
Media and techniques …
Message and meaning …
- The artwork is decorative, with rich textures and patterns.
- Beads, leaf and flower shapes are attached to the surface, making it appear detailed and intricate.
- The shiny surfaces and silver and gold details make the surface shimmer. (Adding what Burman calls 'Indian bling bling'!)
- The style of the artwork looks like traditional silk painting which often shows figures and stories from Indian history and mythology.
- The mood is joyous, fun and celebratory.
Who is represented in the artwork?
- The artwork depicts the Hindu goddess Parvati.
Describe her pose and what she is doing.
- She is shown standing on one leg and playing a stringed instrument (possibly a veena).
- She appears to be depicted with two sets of arms (Parvati is usually shown with two or four arms).
- The arms not playing the instrument appear to be holding love hearts. The multiple hearts in her right hand possibly form the shape of a flower – one of the attributes associated with Parvati.
What is in the background?
- Parvati stands against a pale blue sky with fluffy clouds.
- A dark horizon suggests water – Parvati appears to be standing on a floating lotus flower.
What else can you see?
- Around the figure of Parvati are leaf, seed and flower shapes.
- There are also what appear to be rays, formed from rows of beads, radiating from her hands and body.
What materials and techniques has she used?
- The artwork is a mixed-media collage.
- Burman printed the image of Parvati onto silvery metallic paper and then collaged motifs and objects onto the print.
How has she used found objects?
- The collaged elements include plastic beads, metallic paper stickers, fabric shapes, felt bindis, rhinestones and a peacock feather.
- She gathered the objects, which she describes as 'paraphernalia and bits and pieces', from India, from shops in London and also from her travels to other places including Sri Lanka.
How has she used visual elements such as composition and colour?
- The figure of Parvati dominates the composition...
- but the floating shapes that surround her and the rays of light that radiate out from her, draw our eyes around the image – perhaps symbolising the wider universe that she watches over.
- The colours also direct how we look at the artwork. Parvati's gold and silver body ensures that she stands out from the blue background. But the red hearts, flowers and leaf shapes dotted around the image help to balance the image and create an 'all over' composition.
- The pale blue background suggests the ephemerality of the universe
- The different materials of the objects she has added to the print – ranging from soft fabric to shiny metallic paper and hard plastic beads – add to the rich textured appearance of the print. (Imagine how different it would look without the collaged objects.)
- Parvati is the goddess of power, energy, nourishment, love and motherhood. She is sometimes represented as the primordial power behind the creation of the universe – so is both creator and destroyer.
- By choosing a powerful Indian goddess as her subject, Burman presents a strong and positive image of women – specifically Asian women.
- In the artwork, Parvati is beautiful, elegant and aware of her femininity, but she is also powerful and in control. She dominates the image – sending out rays that extend into the world around her.
- Key themes in Burman's work are cultural and gender representation. By choosing the goddess Parvati for the image, Burman upturns preconceptions about women and Asian women.
- Her use of the Hindu goddess also reflects the importance of her own cultural heritage.
- In the artwork, we can see bindis, jewellery and other 'bling' – found objects that Burman turns to again and again in making her work.
- By including objects gathered both from India and shops in the UK, Burman reflects her dual culture as a 'Punjabi Liverpudlian'.
With Auto-Portrait, Chila Kumari Singh Burman created a self-portrait that puts across different aspects of her character and 'self'. It also challenges viewers to reflect on their preconceptions about who she is.
Create a self-portrait that encompasses the different aspects of your identity. It could reflect your cultural background, where you live, your interests, your moods, the music you like – everything that makes you who you are.
First thoughts
It might help to start by making a mind map for your self-portrait. Write your name in the centre of a piece of paper. Surround your name with words or notes relating to the different aspects of your identity.
Media and techniques
From the Series 'Our cultures are the portals – the gateways between one world and the next'
2020
Poulomi Desai (b.1966)
Use your portrait to challenge perceptions. How do you feel people see you? What preconceptions might they have about you? How can you challenge them and their preconceptions in your portrait?
Further inspiration
Take a look at the photographs of artist Joy Gregory whose work engages with issues relating to self-identity, Blackness and femininity.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode fused African and European cultures in his portraits to explore race, spirituality, sexuality and the self.
Starting points
Burman has adopted various objects from her history as personal symbols to reflect who she is.
For example, ice cream and ice cream vans have become iconic and powerful symbols of her early life and her family's history. They represent the struggle her family first experienced when they arrived in the UK and pay homage to her father.
Cornet – Eat Me Now
2012, sculpture by Chila Kumari Singh Burman (b.1957)
Bindis are used by Burman to reflect her Indian Hindu heritage. She often uses them in an unexpected and subversive way to upturn people's preconceptions about South Asian women.
Artwork ideas
Make the object into an iconic motif using Pop art as inspiration. Pop artists made everyday objects into iconic images that reflected contemporary society. Use bold shapes and colours. Use photo editing tools to simplify an image of your object and change the colours to make your object more vibrant or more personal.
Or consider making your object into a sculpture inspired by Burman's sculpture Eat Me Now. Explore other artists who have drawn on everyday objects from their history or culture and made them into iconic symbols.
Pop artist Claes Oldenburg's NYC Pretzel (x3) uses the humble pretzel to represent New York where he lived.
Veronica Ryan's sculpture Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Bread Fruit (Moraceae) and Sousrsop (Annonaceae) is inspired by fruit that can be found in markets in the East End of London. She uses these to symbolise and celebrate her Caribbean heritage and the Windrush Generation who arrived in the UK after the Second World War to help rebuild the country.
Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae), and Soursop (Annonaceae)
2021
Veronica Ryan (b.1956)
Make a mixed media artwork that expresses your thoughts and feelings about an event or issue.
What do you feel strongly about? How can you use art to put your message across and get your voice heard?
Media and technique suggestions
Find inspiration
Explore more artworks on Art UK that address important themes and issues or reflect the artist's response to powerful events that have impacted them.
United Kingdom 2022
Reena Saini Kallat (b.1973)
Whistle for the Wind 2021
Mónica de Miranda (b.1946)
No Cover Up 2021
Ingrid Pollard
Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere 2018
Gillian Wearing (b.1963)
HorseHead 2023
Adéolá Dewis (b.1977)
Shout 2020
Greg Bunbury (b.1976)
'Great' Britain 2020
Natasha Pszenicki (b.1980)
From the Series 'Black Youth and Mental Health' 1991
Dave Lewis (b.1962)
