ARTISTS
Poulomi Basu is a neurodiverse artist known for her exploration of the interrelationship between systems of power and bodies through work that exists at the limits of art, technology and activism. Basu’s work is defined by her transnational identity, working across interdisciplinary and experimental media. Even though the centre of her works are often women of the Global South, yet her art and its histories are connected beyond their places of origin. Her works encourage us all to challenge and revise dominant histories by highlighting the global exchanges and flow of experiences and ideas. She has become widely known for her influential works Blood Speaks, Centralia, To Conquer Her Land, Fireflies to name a few. Her focus on the intersectionality of ecological, racial, cultural, and political issues experienced specifically by women of the global south, such as herself gives agency to those whose voices are deliberately silenced, ferociously advocating for womxn through her practice as an artist and activist for more than a decade. Shifting between mediums, Basu has to date worked with photography, performance, installation, virtual reality, and film influenced by magical realism, sci-fi, and speculative futures. Basu’s diverse body of work is committed to multiplicity. Eschewing linear notions of history, her approach to investigating themes such as the shifting notions surrounding landscape and the conditions female experience are cyclical in nature. With roots in photography, her practice demonstrates a fidelity to no single artistic modality or creative process; rather, interdisciplinary pursuits that are in constant, active flux. Her evolving, embodied approach to artmaking is emblematic of the plurality of experiences and the myriad ways in which identity is constructed in contemporary culture.Selected as a BAFTA Breakthrough UK 2024, Basu was awarded 2023 ICP Museum Infinity Award for outstanding contribution to ‘Contemporary Photography and New Media’. Her work has was nominated at Festival de Cannes 2024. Her first photobook Centralia was published by Dewi Lewis in 2020. The book and exhibition won the 2020 Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award Jury Prize, and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize among many others. She was invited to SXSW 2019 and 78th La Biennale Cinema Venezia ‘Production Bridge’. In 2020, Basu was awarded the prestigious Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society for her transmedia work Blood Speaks, which put menstrual rights on the international agenda and resulted in a major policy change. Basu was selected for Sundance New Frontiers Lab Fellowship, she is a National Geographic Explorer, and Magnum Foundation Social Justice Fellow. She is visiting lecturer for the Visible Justice & Collaborative Unit at the London College of Communication.
