Said Adrus (born 1958) is an Ugandan-born British multidisciplinary artist. Adrus has lived in the UK,

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, and other countries in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Biography

Adrus was born to

Gujarati Muslim The term Gujarati Muslim is usually used to signify an Indian Muslim from the state of Gujarat on the western coast of India. Most Gujarati Muslims have the Gujarati language as their mother tongue, but some communities have Urdu as their moth ...

parents in 1958 in

Kampala Kampala (, ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Uganda. The city proper has a population of 1,875,834 (2024) and is divided into the five political divisions of Kampala Central Division, Kampala, Kawempe Division, Kawempe, Makindy ...

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

, in what was at the time known as ‘

British East Africa East Africa Protectorate (also known as British East Africa) was a British protectorate in the African Great Lakes, occupying roughly the same area as present-day Kenya, from the Indian Ocean inland to the border with Uganda in the west. Cont ...

’. His family moved there being part of the British colonial project of moving South Asian people to East Africa to build railways. They then moved to

, where they still live. Adrus then moved to Britain, due to

Idi Amin Idi Amin Dada Oumee (, ; 30 May 192816 August 2003) was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 until Uganda–Tanzania War, his overthrow in 1979. He ruled as a Military dictatorship, ...

expelling the descendants of Gujarati indentured labourers, many of whom moved to the UK. Adrus has a BA(Hons) in

Fine Art In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function (such as ...

awarded by the Nottingham Trent Polytechnic. He is a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

, speaking

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

. During the 1980s, his imagery has been described as computer paintings on canvas. He later turned to

mixed media In visual art, mixed media describes work of art, artwork in which more than one Art medium, medium or material has been employed. Assemblages, collages, and sculpture are three common examples of art using different List of art media, media. M ...

and

multi-media Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as writing, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. This is in contrast to tradition ...

ways of working, experimenting with the moving image and screen projection. Since 2015, he's been combining his digital media work with various materials that allude to his voyage from African and Asian coastlines to the Western hemisphere, describing migration and emigration in the modern setting. He references

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol ...

as an influence to his collage work, comparing Warhol's parodying of

Western art The art of Europe, also known as Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period bet ...

conventions to his pushing of the boundaries of painting while keeping its elements.

Works

Group exhibitions

* 1985: ''Eastern Views: Works by Young Asian Artists from the Midlands'' * 1985: ''Three Asian Artists'' * 1988: ''Black Art: Plotting the Course'' * 1988: ''Paintings by Said Adrus - Ceramics by Louise Block'', Horizon Gallery, London. * 1990: ''In Focus'' * 1990: ''In Sight, in View'' * 1990: "''Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces''” * 1991: ''History and Identity: Seven Painters'' * 1992: ''Black People and the British Flag'' * 1992: '' Crossing Black Waters'' * 1993: '' Transition of Riches'' *2008: '' Next We Change Earth'' *2011: ''Recreating the Archive''

Reviews, articles, and texts

* 1990: ‘It Ain’t Ethnic’, ''Black Arts in London'', no. 128, (1–30 September), 5.

Talks and events

* 2016: Straight Outta Gyri

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adrus, Said 1958 births Living people Alumni of Nottingham Trent University People from Kampala Multimedia artists Ugandan artists British people of Ugandan descent