Lee Miller described Pablo Picasso as less a collector than someone who never threw anything away; when one home was full, he simply closed the door and moved onto the next. Chila Kumari Burman’s attitude is not dissimilar – at least, that is, when it comes to studios. The artist, whose pop-bright, culture-fusing neons lit up the façade of Tate Britain, SW1, during the bleak winter 2020/21 lockdown and who has several works in that gallery’s current Women in Revolt! exhibition, has at least three separate units in the Space Studio-run building in Homerton, east London, where she has worked for the past 20 years.
Two are currently in use: paintings, drawings and photographs cover the walls, and the tables at which she ‘snips and Pritt Sticks’ are littered with magpie-worthy treasure – bindis, sequins, gem-encrusted costume jewellery. Crossing either room involves negotiating colourfully upholstered chairs, overflowing crates, a shop mannequin and a skateboard from her recent collaboration with the cult streetwear brand Palace.
The kaleidoscopic amalgam is autobiographical. Chila is first generation British-Punjabi, born and raised in Liverpool. The pastel-hued plastic spoons and glitter-covered cones speak of her father’s job selling ice creams on Freshfield Beach and, she says, the baubles and bling represent a ‘typically traditional South Asian upbringing. If you’re not allowed out at night, you will have seen all the Bollywood films. I used to spend my evenings dressing up and dancing round my room.’
But that is where tradition ends for Chila. ‘Art school was an alternative to an arranged marriage,’ she explains, and it was while she was studying for an MA at the Slade School of Fine Art that she created the Body Prints that are among the works hanging at Tate Britain. ‘I was looking for texture, so I covered myself in paint and lay against the paper,’ she recalls. Then, gesturing towards some more recent paintings based on an image that she found ‘in a sex shop in Hoxton’, referring to the Kama Sutra and mentioning that she has a purple belt in martial arts, she explains, ‘I’m subconsciously exploring different facets of myself, what it is to be a woman, and the contradictions between stereotype and reality.’
At the time of our visit, Chila is preparing for multiple exhibitions and installations, including two large solo shows scheduled for late 2024 and 2025, the second at a major institution. Such a programme highlights the stark contrast between the chaos of her work environment and the order that comes from it, which is aided by the fact that the neons and prints – though designed here – are made off-site. ‘The newest studio was meant to be exclusively for painting,’ says Chila, wryly. ‘But that hasn’t happened – I need another room’.
‘Women in Revolt!’ is at Tate Britain, SW1, until April 7. She is one of the artists included in ‘The World That Belongs to Us’ at The New Art Gallery Walsall until June 9. Chila’s solo show of recent work opens at Compton Verney on October 26.
