A Brief History of British South Asian Art

An insightful exploration celebrating the diverse and dynamic cultural impact of South Asian artists and filmmakers in twentieth-century Britain.

This book will introduce readers to an array of South Asian artists active in the twentieth century, all of whom demonstrate such variety that they challenge the unifying category ‘South Asian’. From Punjabi war veterans who came to fill labour shortages in the interwar period, through to South Asians from Uganda who settled in Britain after expulsion by Idi Amin in 1972, this book will explore how the South Asian diaspora responded to hostility and discrimination by turning to artistic production. Using a variety of media, they made artworks which demanded the colonial constitution of art history be interrogated, and the lives of South Asians to be transformed.

These artworks, together with those by contemporary artists that draw from and reorient their ancestral legacies, have contributed to incisive theories of race, gender, nationhood and aesthetics – all of which come to bear on present debates on power in the art world and beyond.

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