On Friday 20 June, Dr Alice Correia (Lecturer of modern and contemporary British Art) will present her research exploring the presence and absence of South Asian diaspora artists in UK public collections.
Titled, “South Asian Artists and British Collections”, her paper will introduce research into the acquisition and interpretation of artworks by FN Souza and Avinash Chandra by UK public collections, including Tate. She will introduce the ways in which Souza and Chandra were considered “exotic” by British critics and curators during the 1950s and 60s, and how such perceptions informed institutional framings of their work.
Archival research has revealed ambivalences on the part of collections to regard modernist painters of South Asian heritage active in London during the post-war period as part of the story of British art. Correia will present how those ambivalences have informed subsequent understandings and misunderstandings with reference to Souza’s painting Crucifixion (1961) in the Tate Collection.
She argues that significant biases and blind-spots about Souza’s work found in Tate’s acquisition documents continue to ripple through the gallery’s online texts and display captions.
You can view the artwork Crucifixion by F.N. Souza (1959) on the Tate website.
Alice Correia’s talk is organised by the Asian Art, Museums and Heritage Network, University of Leicester, and will be held on Friday, 20 June 2025, 1.00pm to 2.30pm.
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