TBA:06 THE WORKS

SUTAPA BISWAS

Magnesium Bird

“Birds punctuate our sense of time and haunt us either in their presence or in their absence wherever we travel.” —Sutapa Biswas

As the Portland sun sets, a flock of songbirds crafted from flammable magnesium tape will ignite along the streets under the Hawthorne Bridge. The artist will stage a performance reinterpreting the enigmatic pyrotechnics of her piece Magnesium Bird now on view as part of a major exhibition of film installations at the Douglas F. Cooley Gallery Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College. Biswas’ birds join the Chapman School’s Vaux's Swifts as part of our local mythology surrounding avian migration, community and perseverance. Come share in this communal haunting.

Born in Santinekethan, India in 1962, Sutapa Biswas lives and works in London, and is a lecturer at the University of Southampton and Chelsea College of Art and Design, (University of the Arts, London). She studied at the Royal College of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art, and the University of Leeds. Biswas has exhibited her work internationally at spaces including: Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; Harewood House, Leeds; Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Atlas Studio Space, London; The Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies; Tate Modern, London; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.