Gazelle MBA, FRIEZE EXHIBITION REVIEWS: 'Connecting Thin Black Lines' Revisits British Art History

25 September 2025

Frieze reviews 'Connecting Thin Black Lines', 1985–2025 at the ICA — Lubaina Himid's major retrospective group show featuring works by the original artists group of artists from her landmark 1985-1985 ICA, London exhibition including artists Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman, Brenda Agard, Jennifer Comrie, Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter. "[...] One of the most distinctive works in the show is Sutapa Biswas’s 'Birdsong' (2004), a video work staged in an adjoining room. It features a young Indian boy in a tastefully decorated domestic space, interspersed with dreamlike imagery. In one scene, a child’s paper mobile instils a nostalgic mood, while the sudden appearance of a fully grown horse in a bourgeois living room disturbs the tranquil atmosphere. The piece initiates a finely poised call-and-response between the two screens on which it is displayed, circling through images of slow-burning power and intensity. The result is an enchanting combination of the familiar and strange."

'We thought we were being naughty!' The show by Black and Asian women that rocked the art world

23 June 2025

The Guardian gathers the artists from the 1985 ICA exhibition 'The Thin Black Line' — including Sutapa Biswas — to reflect on forty years of change, ahead of the new iteration of the original 'Connecting Thin Black Lines' hosted at the ICA.

Woman up! London is fizzing with fiery feminist art

10 November 2023

Plaster Magazine's Emily Steer on Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain and Women's Work is Never Done at Richard Saltoun, where Biswas's Housewives with Steak-Knives takes centre stage.

Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain – a super important if overwhelming show

10 November 2023

Sarah Kent reviews Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain for The Arts Desk — a landmark survey of feminist art activism from 1970–1990, featuring Sutapa Biswas alongside over 100 artists.

‘Lumen’, Sutapa Biswas, Autograph, London, 4 March 2022–4 June 2022

1 January 2023

Elliot Gibbons reviews Sutapa Biswas: Lumen at Autograph, London, for Object journal.

Bringing World-Class Art, and Wonder, to Mental Health Patients

17 November 2022

The nonprofit Hospital Rooms has commissioned leading artists to make work for British psychiatric hospitals, turning them into spaces that could rival some museums.

Sutapa Biswas – a pioneering artist of exile, race and resistance

11 January 2022

Financial Times coverage of Sutapa Biswas and her major retrospective exhibitions, published January 2022.

Sutapa Biswas: Lumen

1 December 2021

Burlington Magazine review of Sutapa Biswas's exhibition Lumen at Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge, by Julie Hrischeva.

Anicka Yi's Turbine Hall and Sutapa Biswas: Lumen – review

16 October 2021

Laura Cumming in The Guardian reviews Sutapa Biswas: Lumen alongside Anicka Yi's Turbine Hall commission, exploring colonial history and maternal narrative.

Recognition, at Last, After Decades Decolonizing Art

14 October 2021

New York Times feature by Lauren Elkin on Sutapa Biswas as the subject of two major British exhibitions at BALTIC and Kettle's Yard.

Artist Sutapa Biswas: 'I wanted viewers to work hard and feel uncomfortable'

10 October 2021

The Guardian profile by Skye Sherwin ahead of Biswas's retrospective, exploring four decades of work dedicated to women's unheard stories and the legacies of empire.

Sutapa Biswas: “Kali Is the Goddess of War, But Also Peace. I Find Her Liberating”

15 July 2021

ELEPHANT profile by Joanna Cresswell tracing Biswas's life from Shantiniketan to London, her relationship with Kali, and the making of Lumen.

Inside the Mind of Sutapa Biswas

1 March 2021

Royal Academy Magazine interview by Imogen Greenhalgh exploring Biswas's practice, her film Lumen, and four decades of work confronting empire, feminism and identity.

The Sacred Feminine: Tantric Approaches to a Misinterpreted Goddess

20 November 2020

Rachel Dwyer explores Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution at the British Museum, examining the fierce goddess traditions and tantric iconography that inform Biswas's practice.

Beyond The Vulva Mirror: Tantra At The British Museum

16 October 2020

The Quietus reviews Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution at the British Museum, featuring Sutapa Biswas's Housewives with Steak-Knives as a touchstone for the exhibition's themes of divine feminine power.

New Art Acquisition Celebrates The First South Asian Artist To Study At The University Of Leeds

30 September 2020

Yorkshire Times reports on Leeds Art Gallery's acquisition of Housewives with Steak-Knives, celebrating Biswas as the first South Asian artist to study at the University of Leeds.