about
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 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.
Her name sounds like ‘follow me’ with a ‘P’. She was raised by her mother in Calcutta, India and found early inspiration in the city’s rich cinematic history. After her father’s sudden death when Poulomi was 17, her mother told her to leave home as soon as her studies were complete so that she may follow her dreams and live a life of breadth and choices that was denied to her.
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, political and personal collisions experienced specifically by womxn 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 often combines the real and the fantastical and has to date worked with photography, performance, installation, virtual reality, and film influenced by magical realism, and speculative futures.
She is represented by TJ Boulting Gallery, London.
COLLECTIONS
Victoria & Albert Museum (UK)
Museum of Modern Art Library - Special Collections (USA)
Harvard Art Museums (USA)
Autograph ABP (UK)
Martin Parr Foundation (UK)
Rencontres d'Arles (France)
Olympic Museum (Switzerland)
BOOKS
Centralia by Poulomi Basu, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2020
Photography Now: Fifty Pioneers Defining 21st Century Photography. Tate, 2021. By Charlotte Jansen. Photography – A Feminist History. Tate, 2021 By Emma Lewis.
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2021 Catalogue, The Photographers' Gallery, 2021
RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology Exhibition Catalogue, Barbican, 2023
AWARDS & GRANTS
FILM / TIME BASED MEDIA ART / IMMERSIVE
Blood Speaks: Period, Power, Protest – Kunsthal Charlottenborg x CPH:Dox, Copenhagen March 2024 Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, SXSW World Premiere - In Compeition, March 2024
Maya: The Birth, Special Jury Mention Award, New Voices Immersive Competition, Tribeca Film Festival, USA 2023
Shortlisted, BFIxCHANEL Filmmaker Awards 2023
Maya: The Birth, UN Women, Games for Change, UN HQ New York (USA) July 2023
Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, Meta x Women in Immersive Grant 2022
Fireflies, Winner, Best Experimental, Aesthetica Film Festival, UK 2022
Moon Palace, Unseen/Unbound, Amsterdam 2022
Centralia: Ghost Dance, The Photographers’ Gallery, Jun 2021 - Sep 2021
Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, Official Selection, Production Bridge, 78th La Biennale Cinema Venice 2021
Blood Speaks, Selected Sundance New Frontiers Lab Fellowship 2017
Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, Digital Catapult/UK Arts Council, Creative XR Grant 2020 & 2021
Blood Speaks, SXSW 2019.
Blood Speaks, Margaret Mead Film Festival, American Natural History Museum, New York, USA, Oct 2018
Blood Speaks, Nominee: Sheffield Doc Fest Alternate Realities Commission Award 2018
Blood Speaks, Selected: Sheffield Doc Fest Alternate Realities Meet Market 2018
Blood Speaks, Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF), Nepal 2018
PHOTOGRAPHIC ART & CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE
Arts Council England Project Grant, ‘This Is Not England’(Film)
2024 Winner, Infinity Award for Contemporary Photography and New Media, International Centre of Photography Museum, USA 2023
Nominee, Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2021
Shortlisted, Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards 2021
The Hood Medal, Royal Photogaphic Society UK 2020
Winner 2020 Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award Jury Prize
Winner, Best Published Photo Book 2020, Singapore International Photography Festival
Winner: National Geographic Explorer 2020
Lightwork/Autograph Residency 2020
Shortlisted, Centralia, MACK First Book Award 2018
Winner: PH Museum, Main Grant 2018
Shortlisted: Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award 2017
Winner: Magnum Emergency Fund 2016, with the support of the Prince Claus Fund
Shortlisted: Catchlight Fellowship 2017
Finalist: W.Eugene Smith Grant 2016
Winner: Magnum Foundation Human Rights Grant, What Works 2016
Second Place: Firecracker Grant 2016
Selected Magnum Foundation Photography Expanded Immersive Media Lab 2016
Asia Society, China File Grant 2015
Flash Forward Tenth, Best of Magenta 2014
Dali International Photo Festival, 2nd Place, 2013
Foto Visura Award Second Place 2013
Winner: Magnum Foundation Award: Human Rights Scholarship Magnum/NYU 2012
Winner: Magenta Flash Forward UK 2013 & 2010
Selected Belfast Photography Festival 2011
Selected - Foto8 Summer show 2011
Selected Winner, 15 Asian Women's Showcase by Yumi Goto, Angkor Photo Festival 2010
Finalist Inge Morath Magnum Award 2010
Finalist: Best in Show - Foto8 Summer Show 2010
Finalist: Ian Parry Award 2010
ACTIVISM, ACTS, PRAXIS
Published in 2020 her photobook Centralia won the 2020 Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award Jury Prize and has been shorlisted for the 2021 Deutsche Borse Foundation Photography Prize. For Centralia she has was also awaraded a National Geographic Society Explorer 2020 award and was invited as a guest to talk about the book on BBC’s Women’s Hour.
She created Blood Speaks to utilise the power of photography and visual storytellng/activism to result in tangible social change and amplify the voices of women from the majority world. Blood Speaks was selected for the Sundance New Frontiers Lab Fellowship (2017), and presented Blood Speaks at SXSW in 2019.
Blood Speaks placed menstrual taboos and blood politics on the international agenda, resulting in a major policy change: the Nepalese government criminalised the practice of menstrual exile, which is resulting in the death and rape of women. She has also collaborated with Action Aid on the campaign #MyBodyIsMine launched on World Menstruation Day (2018); and, To Be A Girl, with WaterAid, raised £2 million providing 130,000 girls with reusable sanitary kits and build toilets (2014).
In 2022, Basu partnered again with Water Aid to produce Sisters of the Moon an eco-feminist project that helps raise £5.6 million as part of their Thirst for Knowledge campaign.
In December 2015, she shared a platform with the parents of the Nirbhaya Delhi rape victim talking about her social activist initiative, The Rape in India Project.
In January 2016 at the UN Young Changemakers Conclave, Poulomi spoke on the social impact of sustainable development with specific reference to her long-term project Blood Speaks.
Poulomi featured on the BBC World Service Programme “The Conversation” along- side Lynsey Addario as one of the most significant contemporary war photographers and she featured alongside Hilary Clinton as one of the one of the Amazing women from around the world giving their best advice by Refinery29. In January 2019, the BBC World Service called her an “expert on menstruation” and she was invited in January 2017 by Al-Jazeera to be a guest on The Mystery of Menstruation edition of their programme The Stream.
In 2019 Amnesty International noted her as an important and brilliant “human rights activists breaking the taboos surrounding menstruation” and violence against women.
She is the Director of Just Another Photo Festival, a traveling guerrilla visual media festival that democratizes photography by taking it to the people and forging new audiences. Her festival was listed by BJP as 2015’s most Cool and Noteworthy and in 2016 in JM Colberg’s Conscientious Photography Magazine as an alternate voice of the ‘audience’.
She is visiting lecturer for the Visible Justice & Collaborative Unit at the London College of Communication.
’Making art in emergency’ Inter:active symposium Kunsthal Charlottenborg x CPH:Dox, Copenhagen March 2024
RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, with Alona Pardo, Paris Photo Nov 2023
Joyful Militancy and Protest: RE/SISTERS Talk, Barbican, London Oct 2023
RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, with Shanay Jhaveri, Alona Pardo and Dounia Wone, Barbican, London, Oct 2023
Maya: The Birth of Superhero, In Conversation with Poulomi Basu and Alice Rawsthorn, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sept 2023
Activism in Action: exploring the impact of immersive art on real life change, Tribeca Film Festival, June 2023
V&A Schools Webinar Live - Spotlight on Women in Photography with Fiona Rogers, in collaboration with The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography project, April 2022
’Speculative Futures’, Poulomi Basu & Alona Pardo (Barbican) in Coversation, Autograph ABP, June 2022
Tate Modern Photobook talk series with Bindi Vora, Off Print, curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, Sept 2022
Plateforme Conversations, artist talk with Shoair Mavlian (Director, The Photographers’ Gallery), Paris Photo, Nov 2021
Artist talk x DB Prize Nominee with Bidisha Mamata, The Phographers’ Gallery, June 2021
’Creative Responses to Crisis’, panel with Paola Antonelli (Head of Design, MoMA), Nicers Tuedays/It’s Nice That, Jan 2021
War, Art and Visual Culture Symposium, King’s College London May 2019
Visible Justice: Embodied Activism, London College of Communication, May 2019
Blood Speaks: Agency, Voice and Gender, SXSW, Austin March 2019
Keynote speaker, Blood Speaks: Agency, Voice & Gender, National Museum of Wales, UK Jan 2019
Royal Photography Society (RPS), Inaugural Women in Photography Lecture, LCC, October 2018
Blue Earth Alliance, Collaborations for a Cause, Seattle 2017
FORMAT Festival UK - talk and panel discussion alongside Martin Parr and Hester Keijser
National Geographic Annual Seminar, Washington DC, January 2016
UN Young Changemakers Conclave, Bombay, January 2016
Images and Ideas – Fred Ritchin, International Centre of Photography, New York, January 2016
Unearthed: The Rape in India Project, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, December 2015
Photography and Human Rights, TISCH School of the Arts, NYU, New York, May 2015
BA Documentary Photography, London College of Communication, London, October 2015
A Ritual of Exile, Water Aid Headquarters, London, May 2014
Artist Talk, Delhi Photo Festival, October 2013
Women in Photography, with Michelle Sank and Jenny Mathews, Falmouth University, Falmouth, February 2012
Radio & Podcasts
Humboldt Art Forum Berlin, Ecofeminism and Embodied Art Practice
BBC Women’s Hour, Centralia, 2020: LINK
BBC World Service, “The Conversation” interviewed along-side Lynsey Addario as one of the most significant contemporary war photographers.
PRI’s The World: Paradise Lies at the Feet of Your Mother: The Mothers of Foreign ISIS Fighters
PRI’s The World: Transformed From Women to Border Guards
DW.DE Worldlink: Politics, Power Identity
PUBLIC LECTURES
Exhibitions
Centralia, Permanent Collection Display, Victoria & Albert Museum, June 2024- onwards RE/SISTERS, Centralia, FOMU, Antwerp, March-Aug 2024
Sisters of the Moon, Acts of Resistance, South London Gallery, London March-June 2024 Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sept 2023 (solo) Fireflies, East Gallery, Norwich, Oct-Nov 2023 (solo)
RE/SISTERS, Centralia, Barbican, Oct 2023 - Jan 2024 (group)
Sisters of the Moon, South London Gallery, March-June 2024 (group)
Maya: The Birth of Superhero, UN Headquarters, New York, July 2023
Olympism Made Visible, National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, Oct 2023 (group)
Centralia, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Paris Photo, Nov 2023
Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sept 2023 (solo)
Fireflies, East Gallery, Norwich, Oct-Nov 2023 (solo)
Centralia, Barbican, Oct 2023 - Jan 2024 (group)
Fireflies, Autograph ABP March-June 2022 (solo)
Eruptions, Side Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Oct 2021- Feb 2022 (solo)
Centralia, Porto Biennale, Portgual 2021
Centralia, TJ Boulting Booth, Photo London Fair, September 2021(solo)
Centralia, The Photographers’ Gallery, Jun 2021 - Sep 2021 (solo)
Centralia Deutsche Boerse Foundation HQ, June - September 2021
Centralia, Photo Works, Festival in a Box, Sept-Oct 2020
Centralia, Paris Photo 2020
Centralia, Rencontres Arles 2020
BIRTH, TJ Boulting, London Oct-Nov 2019
Who is Looking at the Family Now?, Mothers of ISIS, London Art Fair, UK, Jan 2019
Centralia, Getxo Photo, 2018
Blood Speaks, Cortona on the Move, Italy, July-Sept 2018
Just One Inch of Water, RNLI, UN Headquaters, July 2018, New York, USA
Blood Speaks (preview), FORMAT Festival, UK, March 2017
What Works, Magnum Foundation, Bronx Documentary Centre, New York, November 2016
Women in Photography, Magnum Foundation, Objectifs Gallery, Singapore Photo Festival, October 2016
Human Rights Watch Fundraising Exhibition, Sydney, Australia, April 2016
Time to See, House of Commons, Palace of Westminster, London, January 2016
Time to See, Australia House, Australian High Commission, London, November 2015
Time to See, St. James’ Palace, London, October 2015
To Conquer Her Land, Beijing Art Biennial, October 2015
A Ritual of Exile, Tbilisi Photo Festival, September 2015
To Conquer Her Land, Half King Gallery, New York, May/July 2015
A Ritual of Exile (projection), Lodz Photo Festival, Poland, June 2015
Time to See, Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting, Geneva, May 2015.
Voice of Tacitness, Hong Kong International Photo Festival, 2014
Change the Record, Glastonbury Music Festival, UK 2014
To Conquer Her Land, Dali International Photo Festival, 2013
To Conquer Her Land, Yangon Photo Festival by Alliance Françoise de Rangoon, March 2011
The Foto8 Summer Show, Host Gallery in London, July/September 2011 & 2010
To Conquer Her Land, Belfast Photo Festival, August 2011
Magenta Flash Forward group show featured exhibition, Toronto, October 2010
Foto8 Awards group exhibition at Crane Kalman Brighton, September 2010
'Travel Log' Projection group exhibition, Paraty Em Foco, Brazil, September 2010
To Conquer Her Land, The Ian Parry Award group exhibition, The Getty Gallery, London, August 2010
‘Inside/Out’, group exhibition exploring gender, The Strand Art Gallery, Mumbai, December, 2009
To Conquer Her Land, The New Gallery, London College Of Communication, December 2009