Chai Shai: Asian British Art Research Group (with a focus on South Asian British and East Asian Contemporary Women Artists Practice) aims to address underrepresentation of Asian British women artists in exhibitions and challenge their under-representation and invisibility in the British Art world. Our focus is to shed light on the systematic barriers, including racism and misogyny, that prevent these artists from gaining equal exposure and recognitions within visual arts. By bringing together artists, writers, curators, academics, and researchers, we aim to generate new channels of thinking and networking that will contribute towards the development of British Art curating e.g. generating material and networks leading to a new exhibition of contemporary artists work. 

This is the fifth research group event in a series of reading groups, film screenings, performance, workshops and symposia we aim to create thinking spaces that will unpack notions of invisibility and disenchantment, and identity strategies for redressing this imbalance. 

Jasmir Creed

Jasmir Creed is a practice led PhD researcher at the Slade School of Fine Art. She explores alienation and the transcultural in paintings of people in urban non-places or iconic historical sites, informed by her identity as a British South Asian artist. Solo exhibitions of paintings by Jasmir Creed include Urban Forest at Delta House Studios, London 2017; Dystopolis at Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool 2018 and Utopolis at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery 2023. Group exhibitions include Asia Triennial Manchester 2018, Home and Unhome at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China, 2020 and Art Contact, Istanbul Art Fair, Turkey 2021. 

Bindu Mehra

Bindu Mehra is currently pursuing her practice-led PhD at the Slade School of Fine Arts and her film has recently been nominated for an award at the Cannes Short Film festival. Bindu was short listed for Documenta 14 (independent project) and at Tate Britain, London UK 2009. She is the founding director of an online curatorial platform called The Digital Silk Route with the aim to fuel discourse, critical enquiry and explore possibilities of working transnationally in the arts. The collective has been fostering collaborations, exchanges and engagement between international art communities. It supports video art practices with thematic resonance to transnational identity, citizenship and migration. They have been exhibiting and screening moving image works at The University of Toronto, Art Gallery of Mississauga, MS University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, Maison de la Culture de Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Bindu has also held workshops at the Blackburn Museum and has taught at the Virginia CommonWealth University, USA.  

Kristen Kreider

Kristen Kreider is a writer and artist. Her research stems from an interest in the poetics of thought, its materialization as form, and a concern with how artworks relate to the world. In collaboration with the architect James O’Leary, Kreider’s artistic practice engages with sites of architectural and cultural interest and they are currently working on a large-scale project, Ungovernable Spaces, engaging with five sites of community and resistance globally. Acting primarily as a facilitator for this project, Kristen brings to this her experience working with postgraduate art research at UCL, Oxford and Goldsmiths.