If you think of the canonical paintings of children in western art, their subjects are overwhelmingly white, cherubic baby Jesuses or aristocratic offspring overdressed in finery to reflect their parents’ status. Which is one reason why British artist Matthew Krishanu’s sparse, dreamlike paintings of young brown boys roaming free and having adventures in subtropical climes – loosely based on himself and his brother as children – feel so fresh and compelling. “The motivation even to represent these figures,” Krishanu says in his London studio, “and have them on the walls of galleries around the world, is a response to the historical disempowerment of the brown figure, and of children, within western art.”
Childhood and the histories of empire are central themes for the artist, who was born in Bradford to an Indian mother and white British father and lived from the ages of one to 12 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where his parents worked as missionaries. These experiences have been distilled into ethereal vistas of the brothers boating, exploring landscapes of rushing water and purple mountains, as well as interior scenes of missionary activity in Dhaka.
