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This talk focuses on the work of leading British South Asian women artists Jai Chuhan, Permindar Kaur, and Raksha Patel.

Interworlds: Transcultural Hybridity in Art project explores decolonization of the curriculum and the museum, and how the transcultural contributes to contemporary art in its production and reception, in art colleges, museums, galleries and communities.

Permindar Kaur will talk of her work as a sculpture/installation artist, whose approach to art is playful, using childlike objects to explore the territory of cultural identity, home and belonging. She will consider her early career in the 90’s from her MA in Glasgow School of Art where she contributed to Eddie Chamber’s show Four x 4, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (1992) and the BBC Billboard Art Project (1992), British Art Show 4 (1995) and projects including At Home With Art (Tate Britain, 2000 & touring), and recent shows Interlopers, (UH Art Gallery, Hatfield, 2016) and Home (HS Projects, London, 2020/21). She is currently working on a new project for The ArtHouse, Wakefield, expanding on the theme of home.

Permindar Kaur has exhibited internationally in major solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo shows include HOME, 5 Howick Place, London (2020-21); Hiding Out, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham (2014). Major group exhibitions include Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945, YSP & UK tour (2021-23); Ikon in the 90’s, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2021); Animals & Us, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2018); At Home with Art, Tate, London (2000); Flexible Co-existence, Art Tower Mito, Mito, Japan (1999); Pictura Britannica, Art from Britain, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (1997); British Art Show 4, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff (1995).

Jai Chuhan will present her practice as a painter within the contemporary transcultural and art history. She creates expressionistic paintings in depictions of the body and portraiture that often show an isolated figure in room-like spaces, an arena for exploring themes such as love, inspired by her position as an Indian-born British artist. The images suggest psychological tensions within symbioses of male and female, home and unhome. She uses fluid layers of vivid colour to depict the body as politicized territory, focussed or blurrily glimpsed, in painting that ‘unfolds and reveals itself into a configuration that expresses a female gaze’.

Jai Chuhan is an Indian-born British artist. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and her work has included being a Professor at Liverpool John Moores University. Her paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally including Sweden, Italy, Belgium, China, Turkey and in the UK at venues including Tate Liverpool; Barbican, London; The Lowry, Salford; Ikon, Birmingham; Arnolfini, Bristol; Pitshanger Gallery, London; Watermans Art Centre, London; Liverpool Biennial; and HOME for Asia Triennial Manchester. Her paintings and drawings are held in public collections including Cartwright Hall, Bradford; Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool; Arts Council Collection and Tate. 


The Interworlds talk series is supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies and by the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London.

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