Untitled (Woman in blue weeping)

Sutapa Biswas, Untitled (Woman in blue weeping), 1996. Commissioned by the Institute of International Visual Art, UK, for the site-specific exhibition ‘The Visible and the Invisible: re-presenting the body in contemporary art and society’ by inIVA curated by Zoe Shearman and Tom Trevor. Located across different sites in the Euston and Kings Cross areas of London, UK, Biswas's moving image work was hosted in the forecourt of University College London where Biswas had been a postgraduate student (at The Slade School of Art). Positioned within the Beadle's Box overlooking the preserved remains of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (the designer of the panoptican which forms the architecture of the circular central viewing structure in prisons), Biswas's Untitled (Woman in blue weeping) is a silent work that depicts a woman in her forties (the actress Joanna Hole) crying in real time. Filmed in Biswas's own kitchen, the female subject here slowly weeps as she sits in front of a cup of tea. This work in part is a meditation on the human condition and questions of failure and trauma. Projected outwards from within the Beadle's Box onto an opaque small pane of glass, a reflection of the projected image of the 'woman in blue weeping' in this poignant piece also casts a reflection across the approximate position of the the heart of Bentham's preserved remains. ©Sutapa Biswas. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2026.

Biswas's Untitled (Woman in blue weeping), 1996, was hosted at University College London alongside other site-specific works created at this location including installations by Bruce Nauman and Maureen Conner. For more details please see the image of the flyer and map attached.