CHILA BURMAN’s influence manifests itself in two ways. First, she speaks up for other British Asian women artists so that they don’t have to through all the struggles she has experienced.
And second, her success has made her a role model. In fact, these days she is quite a star, charmingly telling BBC listeners on Radio 4’s Front Row she wanted to be considered “Queen” of the art world.
Dr Chila Kumari Singh Burman MBE – just “Chila” to most people – has been an artist for 40 years and wishes recognition had come sooner. Born in Bootle into a Hindu Punjabi family, her trademark is an icecream van with a tiger similar to the one her father would drive around Liverpool when he came over from India.
Over the years, Chila has been described as a “Black artist”, a “British Asian artist”, a “feminist artist”, and “an Indian artist”, and although there were periods when these labels could be applied to her, she now feels she has outgrown them all.
“I am just an artist,” she said. “With someone who is white, you don’t say he or she is a ‘white artist’.”
The commissions haven’t stopped coming since she lit up the night sky at Tate Britain at the height of the pandemic in November 2020. It was meant to be a “winter commission”, but Chila persuaded the museum that her display, called “Remembering a Brave New World”, was better promoted as a “Diwali decoration”.
The Tate Britain display proved life changing for Chila. The decorations were vintage Chila.
As Tate Britain pointed out at the time: “The façade is resplendent with neon sculptures including Hindu deities such as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and purity, and Ganesh, the god of prosperity. Hanuman the monkey god and several illuminated animals, including a life size tiger and a peacock, are juxtaposed with luscious lips eating an ice-cream cornet and winter snowflakes. The installation also includes the figure of Rani (queen) of Jhansi, a fierce warrior and symbol of Indian resistance after she led a battle against the British in 1857. The figure of Britannia is also fused with the neon image of Kali, the Hindu goddess of liberation and power, and in the centre of the installation is a depiction of the third eye, suggesting the route to higher consciousness.”
Tate Britain’s director, Alex Farquharson, said: “I hope this spectacular transformation of Tate Britain’s façade can act as a beacon of light and hope during dark lockdown days and bring joy to all those who live or work nearby.”
She was then invited to light up Covent Garden. This time she chose a white tiger – similar to the one she had already modelled when Netflix wanted her to promote the film adaptation of Aravand Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize winning novel, The White Tiger.
In October 2021, Chila’s illuminations, including yet another tiger, inaugurated the annual Bloomsbury Festival in London in the community garden at the Cromer St/Harrison St junction. Her tiger was also seen outside the Wellington Hotel in Westminster.
February 2022 saw Chila bring a new show, “Neon Drama and Neo Drops”, including “my tiger Janu”, to the Mansard Gallery at Heal’s flagship store in Tottenham Court Road.
In December 2022 the Cabinet Office felt Chila represented the best in British diversity and took her icecream van to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, where it proved “a huge hit”.
There was a message about Chila at the side of the van.
“Great Art lights the world around us”, it began and went on, “Chila Burman is a South Asian pop artist, who likes to create art that is fun, but also makes you think. In the 1950’s Chila’s father came over from India to work in Liverpool, a city renowned for creativity. Not long after he arrived he decided to sell icecream from a van that was covered in amazing decorations and colours – he bought a little part of India to the streets of England which was embraced by his new community. Chila’s father’s van is now the inspiration for her work which is exhibited all around the world.”
This year she was invited to the “Liberty and Light” show in Barcelona, where nearly 30 of her neons were on display. This was immediately followed by a trip to Italy where she participated in the “Light is Life” exhibition in Breschia-Bergamo, decreed the country’s city of culture.
The lights were meant to lift the gloom, metaphorically and literally, as Chila put it: “It’s quite sad, actually. because of all the people who died in Italy of Covid in the beginning. Really, this whole festival is to commemorate and to lift the spirit of this particular community after all that has happened.”
Her exhibitions are continuing in Weston-super-Mare, where she has contributed a “neon pigeon” to the Promenade. She is in Bordeaux where the theme is a “funfair in slow motion”.
She is having a solo show in Liverpool which she has called Merseyside Burman Empire, “an experimental space filled with her eye-catching designs and artworks”.
Chila is also one of 22 artists invited to a display of sculptures at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. She has contributed to “The Horror Show” at the Somerset House Gallery in London.
She is in Manchester for a display called “A Tall Order!”
Explaining the title, the organisers said: “Our policy is to encourage new audiences for art, particularly women, black communities, young people, those with disabilities, and to encourage cultural activity for working class communities. Broadly, to change the domination of art by a white middle class male audience. A tall order!”
She has been invited to South Korea in April for the Gwangju Biennale, which is said to be on a par with the Venice Biennale. One of her entries will be a vinyl wall collage 12 metres by 3 metres.
“I’m also making a glass neon of a giant mermaid,” said Chila.
Her work will feature in a coffee table book that is being brought out by the Tate this year.
Chila said: “I’m also in Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi.”
The venue for her next exhibition is a surprising one.
“My tiger has just arrived at Eton College because that’s where my next exhibition is,” she revealed.
Her icecream van with the neon lit tiger on top – the vehicle was used for dispensing icecream at the World Cup – has been brought from Doha and will be parked outside the art gallery at Eton.
How she got the Eton Commission goes back to her early period when for two days a week she would teach at Villiers High School in Southall.
“That was my bread and butter money,” said Chila.
She became friendly with another teacher Caroline Atwill. “She’s got a big job as head of art at Eton. She invited me to open on International women’s day which is March 8.”
The exhibition will run until May 12.
Chila’s recollection is confirmed by Atwill, who told GG2: “We will be having a Chila Burman exhibition in the Drawing Schools Gallery.
“The exhibition will be an opportunity for not only Eton pupils to view and be inspired by a female artist but also our partnership schools, many in the local area of Slough, Windsor and London and from ethnic minorities. We have arranged an additional visit with the school in Southall, with predominately Punjabi pupils.”
Atwill remembered: “Villiers High School is where Chila and I first met many years ago when I was head of art there. She was a great inspiration to the pupils, providing fantastic workshops, referencing her life growing up in the UK with Punjabi heritage, which they could relate to from a contemporary British Punjabi female artist. So it is rather fitting that they will be able to benefit from Chila and this exhibition once again.
“The exhibition promises to be vibrant and celebratory. The icecream van will be positioned outside the Drawing Schools for the duration of the exhibition.
“The college is very much looking forward to Chila’s exhibition. We have regular exhibitions in the Drawing Schools gallery and aim to exhibit a range of artists from different backgrounds and specialisms. Our partnerships team is also very excited to be able to invite our partnership schools to the exhibition.”
A short walk from Eton is Windsor Castle where Chila received her MBE on February 28 this year. It was given to her during the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for her “uplifting” installations during the pandemic.
Chila remembers she took up art because she excelled at it at school and was the subject in which she got top marks. Chila’s father, Bachan Singh Burman, arrived in Toxteth in Liverpool in 1954, after having worked as a tailor for Dunlop in Calcutta (now Kolkata) for 16 years. He was joined shortly afterwards by his wife, Kamala Devi, and their daughter and son, Ashra and Achar. Three other children – Chila, Ashok and Ashan (who has passed away) – were born in Britain.
Chila attended Bootle’s Girl Grammar School, and at 13, when the family moved to Formby, a “posh part of Liverpool” – it was near Freshfield Beach where her father had a pitch for his icecream van – she switched to Waterloo Park Grammar School for Girls.
“And that’s when the art teacher there spotted me,” she recalled. “He said, ‘You should go do a foundation course at art school.’ And that was that was it, I suppose.”
She did an art and design foundation course at Southport College of Art. She moved to Leeds Polytechnic where she graduated with a First in fine art and graphic design, before venturing to London to the highly selective Slade School of Fine Art where she got her MA in printmaking and painting in 1982.
“I have been doing art since 1976,” said Chila.
Over a period of 40 years, her work has spanned “multiple media, from printmaking and painting, to installation and film”, according to the University of the Arts. “She has pieces in the Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Wellcome Trust, as well as numerous international institutions.”
When Chila received an honorary degree from the university in 2018, its vice chancellor, Sir Nigel Carrington, called the Punjabi lass from Liverpool – as the artist still likes to think of herself – “the zeitgeist of our times”.
