A weekly Guide column in which we dissect the influences and interpretations of a work of art
Fear no evil …
Kali, goddess of destruction and banisher of evil, packs a meaty punch in this 1985 painting and collage-work by the Indian-born, London-raised Sutapa Biswas. That’s a steak knife she’s brandishing, and the string of heads around her neck are evil dictators.
Heads will roll …
Britain’s colonial past is raised in the work, as are art history’s prejudices. Kali’s flag bears an image of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes, signalling Biswas’s personal sense of lineage with female artists of the past. The beheading was a subject favoured by Artemisia, the 17th-century outlier who defied the odds to become a leading artist after her own rape.
The more things change …
Biswas was studying at the University of Leeds when she created this avenging housewife-deity. Her tutor, renowned art historian Griselda Pollock, remembered her as a force for change within the department. Like her peers in the black arts movement, such as Lubaina Himid and Sonia Boyce, Biswas was working against a backdrop that included apartheid and Thatcher’s divisive politics on the one hand, and the gathering momentum of black feminism and civil rights on the other. Her goddess’s incendiary power burns just as brightly today.
Included in Midnight’s Family, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum online
