She Curates x Art on a Postcard

About 

Chila Kumari Burman was brought up in Liverpool and educated at the Slade School of Art in London. Chila Kumari Burman has worked experimentally across printmaking, painting, sculpture, photography and film since the mid-1980s. She draws on fine and pop art imagery in intricate multi-layered works which explore Asian femininity and her personal family history, and where Bollywood bling merges with childhood memories. The Bindi Girls are a series of female figures composed almost entirely of colourful and glittery bindis, gems and crystals. Meticulously handcrafted and embellished, they suggest a powerful yet playful femininity. From bindis and other fashion accessories to ice cream cones and ice lolly wrappers, Chila often uses everyday materials in her work, giving new meaning to items which others may see as worthless, cheap or kitsch. Ice Cream has a particular significance in her work and references her childhood in Liverpool where her father, who arrived as an immigrant from India in the 1950s, owned an ice cream van and was a popular figure as he drove around selling ice cream for over thirty years. As well as paying homage to her father, her Ice Cream works evoke the awakening of her own creative spirit when as a child she would help out in the ice cream van and became immersed in a world of colour, flavour and materials. 

Chila Kumari Burman’s work is held in a number of public and private collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wellcome Trust in London, and the Devi Foundation in New Delhi. 

Education 

1980-1982: MA in Fine Art, Slade School of Art, London. 

1976-1979: Bachelor of Honors Arts degree in Fine Art Printmaking, Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University) 

1975: Foundation Course in Art, Southport College of Art and Design Solo Exhibitions and Special Commissions 

Selected Exhibitions/Awards

2017- April 2018 Iluminating India, Science Museum 

2017 Dec 1st to Dec 21st "Dada And The Punjabi Princess, Attenborough Centre, Leicester 

2017 permanent - 2 Commissioned works, Wellcome Kitchen - Wellcome Collection 

2017 Pop Art Exhibition , Wolverhampton Art Gallery Selected Group Exhibitions 

2017/18. "The Great Print Exhibition" - Rheged Centre, 17th Nov 2017- 18th Feb 2018 2017/18. "Coming Out - "Sexuality, Gender, Identity Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 2nd Dec 2017- 15th April 2018 2017/18. 

"The Past is Now and The Britìsh Empire" Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 28th Oct - March 2018

"Which Way North" Great Exhibition of the North @Great North Museum, 22nd June - 9th Sept 2018.

"The Place is Here" South London Art Gallery 22nd June - 10th Sept 2017 2017.