With the Void, Full Powers: Anish Kapoor and the Venice Biennale of 1990

In 1990, Anish Kapoor, supported by the British Council, was Britain's representative at the Venice Biennale. Still an Indian citizen at the time of his selection, Kapoor's exhibition questioned what it meant to be claimed as a "British" artist at a time when multiculturalism was at its height and, in Europe, events in Berlin would signal geopolitical change. Aligned for years with artists associated with the “New British Sculpture”, Kapoor's bold exhibition at the British Pavilion would bring him international acclaim. Routinely positioned between East and West, Kapoor's sculpture and conceptual concerns were often read as universalist, but the messy postcolonial and diasporic legacies of British art force a reconsideration of this timely exhibition