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Chila Burman

Chila Burman

WHEN Chila Kumari Singh Burman received an honorary degree from the University of the Arts 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”.

Over a period of 40 years, her work has spanned “multiple media, from printmaking and painting, to installation and film,” the university said, adding, that Chila “has pieces in the Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Wellcome Trust, as well as numerous international institutions”.


She was born in Bootle in 1957 and took up arts full time at the age of 19 “because I was running away from an arranged marriage”.

That is a joke but perhaps with an element of truth. She took up art because she excelled at it and it was also the subject in which she got top marks at school. Over the years, she has been called a “black artist”, a “British Asian artist”, a “feminist artist”, and “an Indian artist”. She now feels she has outgrown them all. “I am an artist now,” she says. “I am on my own.”

In the last couple of years, she has come to be associated with a tiger made from neon lights which has been following her round the country. She is not exaggerating when she reveals: “There are so many messages when I switch on my phone now in the morning – someone somewhere wants me to do something.”

She has been an active and much respected artist over the decades but has been the hottest property on the arts scene ever since she lit up Tate Britain in November 2020.

Technically, it was a “winter commission” but because of the auspicious time of the year and the glitzy Bollywood touch that Chila brought to the façade of Tate Britain, it came to be known as her Diwali decorations. It also happened during the time of the Covid lockdown and the way it lit up the night sky apparently cheered patients in St Thomas’ Hospital on the other side of the Thames. “It was Covid that made me,” quips Chila. “It struck a chord with everybody. Tate Britain helped me smash the glass ceiling.”

The decorations were vintage Chila. The tiger was inspired by a model of the animal on top of the ice-cream van her father drove around in Liverpool when Chila was growing up.

She was invited to light up Covent Garden in September 2021. 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.

In December 2021, Chila bedecked Victoria Beckham’s flagship store in Dover Street in London. In October 2021, she decorated Liverpool Town Hall with a display, called Liverpool Love of My Life. The project at the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool was called, Blackpool Light of My Life.

As her fame grew, Grayson Perry came to interview Chila at her studios in Hackney. In December 2021, when Chila was “in conversation” with Tate Modern director Frances Morris, in the Starr Theatre, the latter remarked: “Her work has taken over London.” Chila would be the first to acknowledge it is not easy making a living as an artist but said of the Covent Garden commission: “They gave me a good fat fee – it’s nice to have a flush bank account for a change.”

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.

The Barbican wants to do something with her under the former BBC arts editor, Will Gompertz, who has joined as director of arts and learning. In October, Chila will decorate the Science Museum, and despite the west’s problems with president Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, she has a solo exhibition scheduled for Moscow in November.

“Freaky,” she admits.

Having lived and worked as a tailor for Dunlop in Calcutta (Kolkata) for 16 years, Chila’s father, Bachan Singh Burman, arrived in Toxteth in Liverpool in 1954. Chila attended Bootle’s Girl Grammar School, and at 13, when the family moved to Formby, she switched to Waterloo Park Grammar School for Girls. “And that’s when the art teacher there spotted me,” she recalls. She did an art and design foundation course at Southport College of Art – the local Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington is now keen to acquire one of Chila’s works. 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,” says Chila. As Frances Morris said to her: “It’s your time.”

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