Sutapa Biswas (b. 1962, Santiniketan, India) is a British Indian conceptual artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, drawing, photography, film, installation, and performance. Her work critically examines the intersections of identity, race, gender, colonial history, and diasporic experience, often drawing on personal and collective memory to challenge dominant narratives and art historical conventions. Biswas explores the politics of representation, questioning how cultural and historical identities are constructed, performed, and perceived. Her imagery frequently blends mythology, historical events, and contemporary experience, reflecting on migration, hybridity, and the legacies of empire. She employs theatricality, symbolism, and visual allegory to address social hierarchies, gendered labor, and the invisibility of marginalized voices. Across her practice, Biswas engages storytelling as a tool for critique, using both intimate and monumental forms to invite reflection on memory, belonging, and resistance. Her work navigates complex histories and personal narratives, creating spaces where viewers confront issues of power, displacement, and cultural negotiation, emphasizing the enduring relevance of postcolonial discourse in contemporary life.
Her work has been recognised internationally and shown at major institutions including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Whitechapel Gallery, the British Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Yale University Art Gallery. Recent major exhibitions include the retrospective Sutapa Biswas: Lumen at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Kettle’s Yard (2021–22), solo shows at Niru Ratnam, London (2024) and Bristol Museums (2025), and group exhibitions such as All About Eve at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, and Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985–2025 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2025), underscoring her lasting influence on British contemporary art.