A Brief History of British South Asian Art

An insightful exploration celebrating the diverse and dynamic cultural impact of South Asian artists and filmmakers in 20th-century Britain
This book will introduce readers to an array of South Asian artists active in the 20th century, all of whom demonstrate such variety that they challenge the unifying category “South Asian.” From Punjabi war veterans who came to fill labor shortages in the interwar period, through to South Asians from Uganda who settled in Britain after expulsion by Idi Amin in 1972, this book will explore how the South Asian diaspora responded to hostility and discrimination by turning to artistic production. Using a variety of media, they made artworks which demanded the colonial constitution of art history be interrogated and the lives of South Asians to be transformed. These artworks, together with those by contemporary artists that draw from and reorient their ancestral legacies, have contributed to incisive theories of race, gender, nationhood, and aesthetics—all of which come to bear on present debates on power in the art world and beyond.

Alina Khakoo is a PhD student on the Criticism and Culture program at Cambridge University, focusing on South Asian diasporic art-making in 1980s Britain, across the contexts of art education, art publishing, archives, and the display of art, thinking through concepts of group work, DIY art-making, and the relations between politics and aesthetics. Alongside her PhD, Khakoo has worked on the curatorial team at Kettle’s Yard, assisting on the exhibitions Linderism (2020), Untitled (2021) and Sutapa Biswas (2021–22). She also works as a library volunteer at Tate, where she catalogues the Panchayat Special Collection. Her publications include the book chapter Reading Between the Texts: On Kali (1984), in Lumen: Sutapa Biswas, Cambridge, London and Newcastle: Kettle’s Yard, Ridinghouse and BALTIC, 2021. She has taught as a guest lecturer and supervisor in the faculty of History of Art and the faculty of English at Cambridge, and has co-facilitated events such as the Kali Student Reading Group with Lola Olufemi (2021); the Decolonizing the Archive workshop with Samia Malik of the Women of Colour Index Reading Group (2021); and seminars for the Postcolonial and Related Literatures Postgraduate Research Seminar series at Cambridge, which she has co-convened since 2019.