Review: Tate Britain Winter Commission by Chila Kumari Singh Burman
Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s installation remembering a brave new world at the Tate Britain is a visual feast. Its fundamental style as a light exhibition that covers the exterior of the gallery is in keeping with previous winter commissions at the Tate, such as Anne Hardy’s ethereal white lights last year and Monster Chetwynd’s LED work in 2018. This commission is like its predecessors — but on acid.
Burman’s art smacks you in the face with its vibrancy and is so dazzling that, after dark, its lustre bounces back off the buildings on the opposite bank of the Thames. Coloured strips of light (which upon closer inspection are not unlike mammoth glow sticks) have been masterfully manipulated into a plethora of detached symbols and words: an eye; a peacock; Ganesh; ‘JOY’; aum; two snowflakes; a Bengal tiger prowling down the balustrade; halfway up the approaching steps, an ice cream van. Above these images and the luminous pink text reading ‘remembering a brave new world’ hangs a curtain of large sequins which each flutter whilst reflecting the lights, adding a sense of dynamism to the otherwise static work.
But this is not only a work made from lights. As a multi-media artist, Burman has incorporated collages drawn from her previous Punjabi Rockers prints and wrapped them around the columns of the neoclassical building, and kaleidoscope-like drawings lie on the vertical surfaces between each step.
The artist, who describes herself as a Punjabi Liverpudlian, is well known for working with themes of South Asian identity and femininity, and her Bollywood-meets-pop-art aesthetic is influenced by her bicultural upbringing. The ice cream van in the foreground of this installation is a continuation of the ice cream motif which features in many of her earlier works, including Cornets and Screwball go Vegas, and which is a nod to the ice cream van her father drove when he arrived in the UK from Punjab.
The anti-imperialist message is clear. Whether it be the very blatant ‘we are here coz you were there’ scrawled on the van or the more symbolic transformation of the statue of Britannia to the Hindu goddess Kali, the idea of the empowerment of the Indian community pervades this work. As is also astutely pointed out in Late at the Tate’s online talk (which accompanies the installation), there is something to be said for the fact that the pillars, the most observable supporting structures of the Tate, have been enveloped in Indian imagery. At a time when conversations regarding holding institutions to account for their past are making it into mainstream discourse, Burman’s art is an exercise in decolonising the legacy of a centrepiece of British culture which was established during the heyday of the British Raj.
Despite these socio-political undertones that seem to look backwards, there is a definite sense of optimism which reigns supreme. The words ‘love’, ‘shine’, ‘light’, ‘aim’, ‘dream’ and ‘truth’ are emblazoned across the building’s pediment, while the title itself enthusiastically points towards the new.
“I guess she’s doing a bit of a British-Indian thing”, I hear one man say, and he’d be right in religious as well as social terms. The neon extravaganza has something of an advent calendar-like charm to it, with the building’s decorated façade drawing you in component by component. Yet despite this Christmassy aspect, remembering a brave new world was opened to line up with Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights), and the installation manages to communicate the joy and energy of the festival, not only aesthetically, but in the conviviality that it seems to inspire in those viewing it.
In her website statement, Chila Kumari Singh Burman declares that all her work aims to cultivate ‘intimacy of looking’. The atmosphere by the Tate after dark exemplifies just that. Throngs of friends, families and accidental passers-by are not simply beholding, photographing and leaving the work — they are nestled in for an evening of basking in its opulence over a cup of shop-bought prosecco. At the close of a year that has meant we are all in need of a bit of hopefulness, it would not be an evening wasted if you were to do the same.
