Poulomi Basu

Bhubaneswar, India

Champions of Tomorrow

In the summer of 2023, Kolkata-born and raised photographer and visual artist Poulomi Basu was commissioned to explore the impact that sport, physical activity and Olympic values education can have on school children in the state of Odisha, with a particular focus on girls who may face barriers related to gender and other forms of social stratification.

While working on the project, Basu visited public schools in Bhubaneswar, where students have participated in the Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP), an international educational initiative designed by the International Olympic Committee that was officially launched in India in partnership with the Abhinav Bindra Foundation and the Odisha Government in 2022. OVEP leverages sport and physical education as a context for imparting life skills and values and for advancing the holistic development of young people and children as active, healthy and responsible citizens.

Championing the rights of women through her socially engaged artistic practice, Basu takes inspiration from magical realism and likes to blend the real and the fantastical into powerful imagery and storytelling that operates in the language of speculative documentary. Basu’s images from Odisha celebrate sport, physical activity and a creative process built on dialogue and collaboration as a means of empowering the young protagonists, many of whom come from humble backgrounds. 

Through the use of devices that emit smoke in various colours, theatrical lighting and props as well as digital superimposing, the artist creates a dramatic, dreamlike pictorial language that transcends classic documentary and conceptually elevates the protagonists into the realm of the supernatural through their participation in sport and the values it fosters.

Through her carefully crafted images, the artist invites us to consider the importance of equal access to safe spaces for the practice of sport, which can be liberating, break stereotypes deeply engrained in society, and change the trajectory of someone’s life by giving flight to Olympic dreams.

Biography

(b. 1983, India)

Based in Kolkata, India/London, UK

Poulomi Basu is a neurodiverse artist known for her exploration of the interrelationship between systems of power and bodies through work that exists at the limits of art, technology and activism. She has become widely known for her influential works Blood Speaks, Centralia, To Conquer Her Land and Fireflies, to name but a few. Her focus on the intersectionality of ecological, racial, cultural and political issues experienced specifically by women of the global south — such as herself —gives agency to those whose voices are deliberately silenced. She has ferociously advocated for women through her practice as an artist and activist for more than a decade. Shifting between mediums, Basu has to date worked with photography, performance, installation, virtual reality, and film influenced by magical realism, sci-fi and speculative fiction.

Basu was awarded the 2023 ICP Infinity Award for her outstanding contribution to Contemporary Photography and New Media. Her first photobook, Centralia, was published by Dewi Lewis in 2020. The book and exhibition won the 2020 Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award Jury Prize, and were shortlisted for the prestigious 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, among many others. She was invited to SXSW 2019 and the 78th La Biennale Cinema Venezia “Production Bridge”. Basu was awarded the prestigious Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society for her transmedia work Blood Speaks, which put menstrual rights on the international agenda and resulted in a major policy change. 

Basu was selected for a Sundance New Frontiers Fellowship, and she is a National Geographic Explorer and Magnum Foundation Social Justice Fellow. Her works are part of public collections, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK); Autograph, London (UK); the Museum of Modern Art (Special Collections Library) (USA); Harvard Art Museums (USA); the Martin Parr Foundation (UK); and Rencontres d’Arles (FR).