I stood up in primary school class and told everyone I was going to be an artist when I grew up. I don't know where that came from. I'm curious about life, the human condition and creating.' Suman, a keen portrait artist, who frequently creates in acrylic and sometimes in oil, tells me. Indeed, as we will discover, it is this very: fascination with human life and culture that would come to underlie the very essence of her work.
Suman grew up in humble surroundings and from a young age she would spend hours watching her aunt draw out things from magazines and gazing intriguingly on as her father fixed up old antiques that he had brought home. 'It was almost like a discipline, my dad was a sculptor, my aunt was an artist', Suman tells me, 'and when you go to ateliers [a practical form of artistic education, whereby you often learn how to create by observing other artists and techniques, before then carrying out the task yourself] that's all it is - you're an artist watching other artists and learning, but instead of a studio I was drawing on the sofa or watching my dad restore something whilst minding our corner shop'. Before long Suman was beginning to research the methods used by other artists, namely painters, and throughout school she would attempt to recreate their works. Though, despite the positive feedback from both her teachers and peers, Suman was soon to enter unto the path which many a young creative stumble upon - that of disillusionment.
'Just because you have talent doesn't mean it will out', Orson Welles once said. Indeed, there are millions of us, past and present, who, as a result of either not having the means or having been simply trapped for life into what was only meant to be a temporary job, have not had the chance to share their talents. 'I left sixth form and didn't do art for many years', Suman tells me and instead she got a job in healthcare, where she worked with amputees. Although it could be an emotionally challenging role, it was one, she tells me, that 'gave [her] loads of life experience' and was one which allowed her to enhance her understanding of the human anatomy. In all, along with growing up as a Sikh, this was to be Suman's own personal ethnographic study of the unseen traumas and emotions that are frequently swept aside in Western society. Moreover, in the context of the magazine at least, it is an understanding which continues to shape the bulk of Suman's artistic themes to this day.
Despite there being an enormity of cultures in Britain, people tend to have very narrow ideas of what it means and, more significantly, what it looks like, to be British. Heavily influenced by the likes of the media and the opinions of older generations, when we pose such questions, we are often confronted by answers which include notions of stiff-upper lips, tweed jackets, polo, tea and, primarily, white people. Consequently, those who find themselves to exist outside of such conceptions are prone to encounter racist attitudes within British society. 'Growing up my parents were not like "okay, you're Sikh this is what a Sikh person should be", I was taught everyone is equal and I didn't see difference, the only time I really felt difference was when I was in work and you'd get called names in the street. It made me want to blend in, I didn't like wearing traditional Indian outfits to go to the Gurdwara on a Sunday, I stumbled over my words trying to speak our native language. I didn't want to stand out'.
Suman's job in healthcare might have been rewarding, but it acted as a constant reminder of just how fragile life is - something which led her to have an epiphany. 'I'd seen how quickly life could change for people through accident or disease and I felt no sense to plan a future anymore,' Suman tells me. 'There was an urgency to do art because who knew whether I'd be able to in the future?'. So, despite it going against what she had been 'taught were the correct steps and order to take in life', Suman decided to take the bold decision to leave her job and pursue a career as an artist.
Though, despite firstly studying portraiture and figure painting in Leeds Art College; before then appearing on - and winning -BBC One's Big Painting Challenge, Suman felt as if she was not free to choose her own narrative. 'After the BBC painting show in 2017, I kept being referred to as South Asian, Sikh or Indian. It sounds weird but I was like "okay, yes I'm Indian. How is that impacting on how people see me again? How is that impacting on my opportunities?" Much like she had dealt with the racist hecklers of her teenage years however, Suman responded with not hate but with an interested and optimistic passion to change things.
Shortly after the BBC One show, Suman was contacted by a Sikh focused publisher, who, in her own words, 'opened her eyes to the wealth of Sikh art and culture.... it really made me sit down and think "Gosh there's loads more I don't know about myself and the value my heritage holds".
It's not about being a Sikh artist, it's about exploring some parts of what it means to really be Sikh and who is choosing that narrative. I want some power over my own narrative. I don't see enough people of colour on gallery walls, I see a lot of imagery where a narrative is chosen for people. I don't see people from my background encouraged into the arts... I want to include people I see around me and I see some people are Sikh in that mix. People have all these stereotypes about what a Sikh is and I want to help break some of them which are applied to me'. Following such passions, Suman has since won a QEST Scholarship in 2021 and has appeared in numerous podcasts and exhibitions, such as the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, Patchings Art Festival and Cass Art - Artist of the Year Exhibition.
Portraits of the Maharaja: Duleep Singh: Franz Winterhalter's (Left) & Suman's (Right)
The year was 1848 and for the past two centuries the British owned East India Company, equipped with tremendously deep pockets, finances which it had acquired from its control of the spice trade, and three was the Maharaja - nine-year-old Duleep Singh. Despite the Company's attempt to appease the population by retaining the Maharaja as the head of the Punjab, albeit in name only, 1848. The Sikhs, however, lost the war and in March 1849 the now ten-year-old Maharaja, who had not seen his mother for four years and wouldn't for another nine, was stripped of his title and sent off across the continent from Lahore to Fatehgarh (modern day Pakistan to India - which until 1947 existed as one single entity), an awfully long way for that period. Resultantly the Punjab was annexed entirely by the East India Company, who were soon to come under the control of the British Government itself in 1858, an act which would commence the Britain's direct rule of India, or the 'British Raj' as it became contemporarily known.
To the victor belong the spoils' goes an old ruthless wartime phrase. It is a saying which may well ignite violent images of Genghis Khan's or Atilla the Hun's pillaging armies throughout Eurasia, yet it was a doctrine which the British Empire mercilessly employed all over the world through its policy of mercantilism. For as well as sending the young Duleep away from his home, so too did the British ensure that his family's jewels were sent back to theirs in blighty. Two pieces of jewellery that were taken from the Maharaja, which are of particular significance to Sikhs, was the Koh I Noor, one of the most finely crafted diamonds in the world, and the Timur Ruby, an enormous spinel gemstone which Queen Victoria had placed into a golden necklace.
We cannot change what happened in the past or who existed within it, yet we can reflect upon those people and events through a lens which is different to that of our forebearers. Indeed, it is this perpetual study of what once was that defines and encompasses the very subject of History itself. Though, whilst there is currently a strong desire to reconsider who should be revered in history, from Edward Colston to Betty Campbell, there has also been a move to revise what should be celebrated in it. In this regard, it's fair to say that the love of empire and imperial conquest- a feeling once known as jingoism- has been firmly supplanted by an inclination to preserve, respect, and analyse whatever unique cultures, creatures, and environments we may encounter. It is a feeling that is reflected on our screens, be it Planet Earth II or Avatar, in our books, whether it be within Yuval Harari's Sapiens or Hemmingway's The Old Man and The Sea, or in our artworks- such as those created by Suman.
Despite numerous protests by Sikhs, anthropologists cultural activists, and many others, the Koh I Noor and the Timur Ruby have never been returned to the Punjab and remain as one of the Royal Family's Crown Jewels to this day. In her own way however Suman restores these jewels to what she believes to be their rightful place and back to where she infers should never have been removed from in the first place - upon the body of Maharaja Duleep Singh himself. 'I realised a lot of Royal collection items were originally from my heritage' Suman says speaking of her recreation of Franz Winterhalter's painting of Duleep Singh, 'so in that painting I put the Koh I Noor back into its armlet form [as you can see on Suman's depiction of Duleep's arm], I put the Timur Ruby back [as you can see around his neck], I put more historical detail in the landscape in the background and put Jind Kaur's portrait on Duleep's neck instead of the one of Queen Victoria...When I found the work and story of Duleep Singh and his link to the Koh I Noor, I started recognising how rich my culture is. You're not told about it when you're in school. I feel sadness that more people don't know how vibrant my culture is. I didn't even know about the Koh I Noor being in the crown myself, I didn't know it was an armlet, that's why I put it back on Duleeps arm in that study I did.'
Not only were Duleep's possessions prized away from him however, but so was his religion and culture. Upon being taken to Fatehgarh, where he lived throughout the rest of his childhood and teenage years, he, most likely as a result of the influence of the incredibly devout Sir John Spencer Login who he was sent to live with, converted to Christianity. Yet this was not to be the end of his indoctrination, as throughout his life those around him would continually look to anglicise him. Being sent to England at the age of 15, he was raised in a manner no different to that of an English public-school boy and over the course of his adulthood he was pushed and expected to be nothing less than an upper-class country gentleman. In the eyes of many British people of the age however, he could never truly live up to such standards, a prejudice that many minority cultures, including Suman, continue to have to deal with in the twenty-first century. 'I feel empathy for that story of someone cut away from where they belong and not being able to reconnect with it', expresses Suman. 'Even though I was born in Britain it hasn't stopped people trying to insinuate I'm less because of my background'. Indeed, it seems that the pressure for many people to anglicise, be they Sikh, black or even Welsh, is still present in the Britain of today.
One of the societal demands placed upon Sikhs that Suman looks to highlight through her works is the pressure to cut their long hair, which, in accordance with Sikh religious practice, should not be altered. 'There's a discipline and great importance of maintaining long hair in my culture, and I want to document that, the intimacy of it. I have done a few pieces of people combing their hair, it's a very simple thing to do physically but there's a whole load of meaning behind it. I'm also interested in the trauma that some Sikhs went through cutting their hair to fit into western society, I feel empathy because I understand what that feels like.' Though, whilst the bulk of her recent artistic works are Sikh orientated, Suman feels as if artists who come from minorities are often obligated 'into making work about the community or religion they're from' she tells me, adding 'I'd say that about most communities of colour. People from different communities should be able to make art without always talking about heir community or background. That's why I like painting figures just getting on with their lives. For a while I did a few paintings of my Gran just asleep, in a way there's nothing going on, it's just living'. It is a reminder that people from all backgrounds all have the same relatable human elements, from the exciting to the mundane - something Suman does an excellent job at reminding us of through her work.
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