Babar Suleman

Babar Suleman is an artist and writer, with a practice-led Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Art from the University of Oxford

A Fulbright scholar, they graduated with an MFA from Parsons School of Design (New York). Suleman was an Inclusive Histories Research Fellow at Compton Verney Art Gallery in 2021. Commissions and grants include b-side, Platform Art Projects, and Arts Council England. Suleman is a Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking at the Manchester School of Art.

Babar Suleman is the recipient of this year’s British Council International Collaboration Grant.

For b-side festival 2022

Requital. The Lighthouse as The Siren.

The masculine and phallic physical structure of the lighthouse is combined digitally with the typically female and mythical figure of the siren through augmented reality and moving image.

Sirens, in myth, brought sailors to their doom by luring them into shipwrecks at their islands while lighthouses are beacons acting as navigational aid bringing maritime pilots to safety. Both are an invitation, providing direction. It is interesting to note that a ‘siren’, as a famously female figure, is seen as ‘negative’ while the phallic lighthouse as ‘positive’. Requital. subverts and cuts across these clean lines for a work that is more paradoxical than these polarities.

An ode to unrequited love, Requital. finds a metaphor in Isle of Portland’s history as a quarry site, for when love is taken but not given, not reciprocated, much like how Portland stone has been taken by man for ages to build elsewhere.