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Abstract
The issues of migration and the allocation of passports is a contentious issue in twenty-first-century Britain. This paper offers a timely assessment of Chila Kumari Burman’s diptych, Convenience, Not Love, 1986–7, which uses the passport motif to present a scathing indictment of British immigration policy in the post-1945 era, which champions the resilience of the British South Asian diaspora in the face of persistent racial discrimination. Taking issue with the stereotype of South Asian women as ‘meek and passive victims’, the paper concludes with a discussion of Burman’s self-portraits from the 1990s, proposing them as ‘radically narcissistic’.
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to Chila Kumari Burman and Deborah Cherry for discussing aspects of this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. See Orlando, British Black Art, 96.
2. Poovaya Smith, The Circular Dance, 11.
3. Jones, Body Art, 24.
4. Karimjee and Patel, ‘Aurat Shakti’, 42.
5. Carby, ‘White Women Listen!’, 216.
6. Conversation with the artist, 5 August 2017.
7. Parker and Pollock, Framing Feminism, 64.
8. Burman, ‘Hiya Sisters’, 53.
9. Fernando, ‘Chila Kumari Burman’, 57.
10. Biswas, et al. Along the Lines of Resistance. The exhibition ran from 7 December 1988 – 22 January 1989.
11. Nead, Chila Kumari Burman, 28.
12. See Sharma, ‘Said Adrus’s Zeitgeist’.
13. Nead, Chila Kumari Burman, 30–1.
14. Cherry, ‘Suitcase Aesthetics’, 803.
15. The Sri Lankan passport was added to the work at a later date, and was not present when the diptych was exhibited in ‘Along the Lines of Resistance’. See reproduction illustration of Convenience, Not Love in Beckett, ‘Resistance, Continuity, Struggle’, 5.
16. Mercer, ‘Romare Bearden’, 126.
17. Eddie Chambers has identified this left-hand panel as an artwork in its own right, titled, You allow us to come here on false promises; however, the artist has asserted that this is incorrect, insisting that the work only exists as a diptych. See Chambers, Black Artists in Britain, 88. Conversation with the artist, 5 August 2017. Nonetheless, Burman did reuse the compositional elements of the British passport, Margaret Thatcher and Union flag, in opposition to the passports of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, in her artist’s page for the exhibition catalogue, The Medium and the Message.
18. Taylor, ‘Bull, John’.
19. Taylor, ibid.
20. Taylor, ibid.
21. Taylor, ibid.
22. Samuel, Island Stories, 330.
23. Kennard, Maggie Regina, 1983.
24. Thatcher, World in Action. Pakistan left the Commonwealth in 1973 owing to Britain’s recognition of Bangladesh, and so is mentioned by Thatcher separately. Rasheed Araeen also used Thatcher’s words in his mixed media artwork, Look Mamma… Macho!, 1983–6. Space does not permit a longer discussion, but for reproduction see Aikens, Rasheed Araeen, 256–7.
25. The navy blue British passport was replaced by the standardized EU burgundy design in 1988. There have been discussions about whether this ‘British’ design is set to be reinstated post-Brexit. See Wheeler and Tominey, ‘Britain’s Blue Passport RETURNS’.
26. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 149.
27. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1991.
28. Spencer, British Immigration Policy, 8.
29. See Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes.
30. Spencer, British Immigration Policy, 12.
31. Spencer, ibid., 96.
32. Layton Henry, The Politics of Race, 39.
33. Layton Henry, ibid. 39.
34. Spencer, British Immigration Policy, 134.
35. As cited in Webster, ‘The Empire Comes Home’, 133.
36. As cited by Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, 151.
37. Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was delivered at a Conservative Association meeting, in Birmingham on 20 April 1968. See Powell.
38. Dummett, On Immigration and Refugees, 104.
39. Spencer, British Immigration Policy, 144.
40. Spencer, ibid., 143.
41. Alibhai-Brown, Who Do We Think We Are, 72–3.
42. See Solomos.
43. Layton Henry, The Politics of Race, 94. Citation from Sunday Times, 26 February, 1978, no page reference given.
44. Bhavnani, ‘Racist Acts’, 51.
45. Sivanandan, ‘Catching History on the Wing’.
46. See Dhondy, ‘Asian Communities’.
47. The original photograph is reproduced in Dhondy, ‘Legacy of the Raj’, 51.
48. as cited in Marangoly George, The Politics of Home, 192.
49. See A Passage to Britain.
50. O’Byrne ‘On Passports’, 403.
51. Mongia, ‘Race, Nationality, Mobility’, 210.
52. Owens, ‘Representation’, 98.
53. Cho, ‘Citizenship’, 279.
54. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, 1.
55. Mongia, ‘Race, Nationality, Mobility’, 210.
56. Mongia, ibid., 211.
57. As translated in Nead, Chila Kumari Burman, 28–9.
58. See Piper, ‘Body & Text’, a visual essay in which Piper presents the British passport as an ambivalent tool of colonial domination and oppression.
59. Arya, Chila Kumari Burman, unpaginated.
60. Trivedi, ibid, 38.
61. Parmar, ‘Black Feminism’, 116.
62. Parmar, ‘Gender, Race and Class’, 241.
63. Perez, ‘Chila Kumari Burman’, 31.
64. Nead, Chila Kumari Burman, 28.
65. See Smith and Marmo, ‘Uncovering the ‘virginity testing’ controversy’, 161.
66. ‘Asian Women Subjected to “Virginity Tests”’.
67. Parmar, ‘Gender, Race and Class’, 245.
68. Conversation with the artist, 5 August 2017.
69. Ellicot, ‘How the Daily Mail Split Thatcher’s Government’.
70. Evans, ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Shameful Support’.
71. Wilson, Finding our Voice.
72. Mama, ‘Black Women’, 26.
73. Parmar, ‘Gender, Race, Class’, 259.
74. For useful introduction to the Imperial Typewriters Strike, see https://strikeatimperial.net accessed 15 July 2019.
75. Wilson, Finding our Voice, 58.
76. For useful introduction to the Grunwick Strike, see https://www.striking-women.org/module/striking-out/grunwick-dispute accessed 18 May 2019.
77. Wilson, Finding our Voice, 54.
78. Orlando, British Black Art, 100.
79. Alexander, ‘Post-Colonial Theatre of Sense’, 5.
80. Alexander, ibid., 5.
81. Burman, ‘Hiya Sisters’, 52.
82. Conversation with the artist, 5 August 2017.
83. Burman, cited in Phillips, ‘Candy Pop’, 5.
84. Lomax, ‘The Politics of Montage’, 9.
85. Jones, Body Art, 24.
86. As cited in Jones, ibid., 24.
87. Sonia Boyce is another significant British artist using self-portraiture at this time. See Tawadros, Sonia Boyce.
88. Jones, Body Art, 17.
89. Jones, ibid., 46.
90. Jones, ibid., 47.
91. Mercer, ‘Romare Bearden’, 143.
92. Burman, cited in Nead, Chila Kumari Burman, 46.
93. Cho, ‘Citizenship’, 275.
94. Cho, ibid., 279.
95. Burman, 1993, cited in Nead, Chila Kumari Burman, 61-64.
96. Chambers, Black Artists in Britain, 88.
97. See Crow, ‘Saturday Disasters’.
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Alice Correia
Dr Alice Correia received her DPhil in Art History from the University of Sussex in 2006. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Salford, and her research examines British art and exhibitions in the 1980s and ‘90s, with a specific focus on South Asian diaspora artists. In 2015 she was awarded a mid-career fellowship by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art to undertake a project titled ‘Articulating British Asian Art Histories’. She was co-editor of the Third Text 30th Anniversary Special Issue, titled To Draw the Line: Partitions, Dissonance, Art: A Case for South Asia, 31 (2–3), which addressed the legacies of the Partition of British India. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Art History, British Art Studies and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.