Krishanu’s white British father and Bengali Indian mother moved from Bradford to Bangladesh in 1981 when he was a year old. The painting that lends the exhibition its title, Playground, is based on a family photograph, and shows two children – one South Asian and the other a blond European – on a seesaw, accompanied by adults who are presumably their parents.
Throughout the exhibition, Krishanu’s paintings draw on his memories of white expatriates in Dhaka and depict seemingly innocent, everyday scenes that also suggest complex colonial narratives and unequal power relationships.
