Two Rugby Players
Collection:UAL Art Collection
Date: 2024
Artist: Helena Samarasinghe
Dimensions:
170 x 200 cm
Medium: Oil pastel on canvas
Object number: UAC 1136
See Also
DescriptionHelena Samarasinghe studied BA Fine Art: Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts. She is a British-South Asian artist working at the intersections of painting, drawing and sculpture, using figuration to create vast expanses of the brown, female self. Using large-scale drawings and cut-outs she creates figures that physically take up space, pushing against flattening conceptions of racialised docility and submissive endurance. Taking stylistic influence from Kolkata’s Kalighat painting, she contextualises her work in histories of colonial resistance, reimagining these figures within the realm of contemporary sport. Working with the South Asian female athlete, she makes visible the latent resilience of brown women, a resilience that has been devalued as passivity through a continued disembodiment.