England, 1994, 50 mins, color
Directed by: Pratibha Parmar

An hour long documentary featuring the work of British Asian artists including Anish Kapoor,(Turner Prize Winner -1991) Jatinder Verma, (Tara Arts Theatre) Shobhana Jeyasingh, Sutapa Biswas, Chila Kumari Burman and Zarina Bhimji (Turner Nominee, 2007).

The video includes interviews with leading cultural critics such as Paul Gilroy, Homi Bhabha and Sandi Nairn.

A new generation of visual artists emerged in 1990’s Britain , producing exciting work which reflected the personal and the public, the present and the past. These were artists who took on the established histories of art in Europe but also brought in other cultural, historical and personal references into their work. They produced an exciting set of projects which involved new ideas and new structures that hadn’t been thought about in painting or sculpture or installation work.

Quotes

• ” The spectacular and wonderful scandal and I use that word advisedly of the artists that we’re looking at, is that they refuse to be typified by such a set of values or perspectives. They will not become the tokens of some simple Indian essence now transplanted into a Bradford or a Birmingham soil , they want to begin to question a range of such fixities , of identity or location, by actually making their work out of the experience of displacement. ” – Homi Bhabha, Writer & Cultural Critic
• ” I inhabit the space I inhabit. That it’s cultural or inter-cultural or whatever , that is simply a fact of my being. It is my intention to proceed in it as forcefully , as clearly as powerfully as I can. But it is not my intention to , so to speak determine it’s parameters. So, I’m really not interested in whether my work is Indian or not, or is in-between or not, in that sense.” – Anish Kapoor, Artist

Related Links

• Institute of International Visual Arts
• Chila Kumari Burman