Poulomi Basu – Phantasmagoria

In her works, Indian artist Poulomi Basu (b. 1983) interweaves documentary photographs and staged scenes enacted in front of fantastical backdrops, creating multimedia, often large-scale installations. The title of the exhibition refers to the phantasmagorias of the 18th century, which captivated their audiences with projections and optical illusions. Basu also blurs the lines between imagination and reality: she drafts speculative visions of the future that simultaneously reflect the present of her protagonists and highlight possibilities for self-empowerment and resistance. In addition to photography, the artist also employs virtual reality, film and performance in her transmedia practice, using the activist potential of the different media to champion the rights of marginalised groups.

Fotomuseum Winterthur is mounting the first major solo museum exhibition with the artist, showing a selection of her pieces. They are centred around the stories of women who, like her, come from the Global South and find themselves pushed to the margins of society. In Sisters of the Moon, for example, one of her most recent works, the artist uses fictionalised self-portraits set against dystopian landscapes to address the effects of water and resource scarcity on women. At the same time, she draws attention to the close intertwining of ecological and feminist issues. By staging herself as the protagonist in front of the camera, the artist shows solidarity with the women who have opened themselves up to her.

Basu’s works call for resistance to patriarchal structures, prevailing hierarchies and the systematic oppression of women and girls. The resilience of the protagonists in her works runs like a common thread through her images: the artist enables them to take on the role of empowered actors and to speak out, telling their personal stories and thus challenging audience perceptions.

About the artist

Born in Kolkata, IN, in 1983, Poulomi Basu is a neurodiverse artist who now lives and works in London, Great Britain. She studied sociology and cinema before completing her master’s in photojournalism and documentary photography at the London College of Communication.

She received an ICP Infinity Award in the Contemporary Photography and New Media category in 2023, won the Rencontres d’Arles jury award Prix Découverte Fondation Louis Roederer in 2020, was selected for the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Fellowship in 2017 and became a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow in 2012. In 2023 Basu was awarded the New Voices Special Mention at Tribeca Film Festival and nominated for the BFI and Chanel Filmmakers Awards. She was invited to the Venice International Film Festival in 2021 and to the South by Southwest film festival in 2019. Her work was shown at the Barbican and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2023, the UN Headquarters in New York in 2023 and 2018, Paris Photo in 2022 and at the Photographers’ Gallery in London as part of her nomination for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2021.

Basu’s work forms part of public collections at various venues, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (GB), Harvard Art Museums (USA), Autograph (GB), the Museum of Modern Art (USA), the Martin Parr Foundation (GB), the Rencontres d’Arles (FR) and the Olympic Museum (CH).