Midnight’s Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain
“I AM concerned with the way in which a language of engineering can be turned into a language of body. It is important that you can never get a view of the whole piece. It is jammed into the building so as to not allow anything but a partial view. The work must maintain its mystery and never reveal its plan. Perhaps then it becomes unobtainable. I want to make things that remain secret.” So, Anish Kapoor — Jewish, Indian, British — introduced this work, Marsyas, at the Tate Modern in 2002. Now images of the work form part of a new online exhibition by the Ben Uri gallery which focuses on Indian artists in the UK, from those with a strong sense of Indian identity to others, like Sir Anish, who see themselves as artists before any national or other considerations.
The exhibition marks a new era for the Ben Uri, which was founded in 1915 by Jewish émigré artists. It has spent two years reinventing itself as a distinctive, full-scale virtual museum, supported by a physical research library, archive and discreet gallery space for snapshot focus presentations of key themes, such as migration and the experience of émigré artists. This latest exhibition is the first by the gallery’s research unit to explore a non-European émigré artistic community, following previous investigations since 2016 into Austrian, Czech, German and Polish nationals who migrated to Britain — narratives which were significantly impacted by the Second World War and the Nazi domination of Europe.