Bhajan Hunjan

Born in Kenya, Bhajan Hunjan moved to the UK in the mid-1970s to study at Reading University and the Slade. From the 1980s onwards she exhibited at spaces including the Indian Artists (UK) Gallery, Aspex Gallery, Brixton Art Gallery, Horizon Gallery, and through the collective she co-founded, Panchayat. 

Hunjan’s work forms part of a wider search for visibility among South Asian and Black women artists in 1980s and 1990s Britain. Her experiences working at a South Asian women’s refuge in Reading deepened her focus on women’s interior lives and the dignity of representation. “My work at present is about my experiences, women, and in particular Asian women,” she stated in 1986. 

Her subjects often appear pensive and contemplative, caught within the confines of formal structure. Hunjan’s works balance figuration and symbolism with an emerging visual language of free-floating lines, ornamental pattern and script-like motifs drawn from her Sikh heritage. The works position identity not through loud assertion but through quiet intensity and reflection. 

From the 1990s onwards, Hunjan turned increasingly toward public commissions - murals and large-scale floor works developed in collaboration with women’s and community group. Alongside this, she worked extensively as an artist-educator across East London, and her studio practice evolved toward a more spiritual experience of stillness and contemplation. 

Hunjan’s contribution to feminist and diasporic art histories has gained renewed recognition through ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ at Tate Britain, from which her work entered the Tate Collection, and through her shortlisting for the MaxMara Art Prize for Women. Her work is represented in major public collections including Tate, the British Museum, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery (Bradford), and Reading Museum & Art Gallery.