Sutapa Biswas

Magnesium Bird, 2006

Medium: Acrylic and line drawing on watercolour paper
Dimensions: 29.5 x 21.5 cm
Framed: 38.2 x 30 cm

Joseph Clark Collection · JCC-0063

About the work

Magnesium Bird explores the transformation of becoming a mother. Sutapa Biswas has described the painting in relation to the birth of her son, and to the losses, gains and renewed perception that accompanied that experience. Made in 2006 in acrylic and line drawing on watercolour paper, it gives a deeply personal subject an intimate material form. The work opens motherhood as a process of change, through which familiar life can be encountered anew.

About the artist

Sutapa Biswas (born Santiniketan, India, 1962) is a British artist working across painting, drawing, photography, film and installation. She moved to Britain in 1966, graduated in Fine Art with Art History from the University of Leeds in 1985, completed postgraduate study at the Slade in 1990 and later undertook research at the Royal College of Art.

Her work connects intimate, often undocumented experiences with histories of colonialism, migration, race and gender. Time, memory and the relationship between people and their surroundings recur across media. She became an important figure in the Black British arts movement of the 1980s, showing Housewives with Steak-knives and Kali in Lubaina Himid’s landmark exhibition The Thin Black Line at the ICA in 1985.

Later works include Birdsong (2004) and Lumen (2021). Major exhibitions at BALTIC and Kettle’s Yard in 2021–22 brought several decades of her practice into view. Her work is held by Tate, the Government Art Collection, Arts Council England and other public collections. Alongside her artistic practice, Biswas has taught fine art and art history extensively.