Let Me Get You a Nice Cup of Tea 2019–20 is an installation and performance by Bangladeshi artist Yasmin Jahan Nupur (b. 1979). For ten days during the display, the artist holds one-to-one conversations with visitors while offering them a cup of tea which she has grown and prepared herself. Each conversation lasts around 20 minutes.
Nupur invites visitors into a cosy domestic space, yet its colonial-era style evokes the histories of violence in the region. The tablecloth is embroidered with an 1886 map of the British Empire. The napkins are stitched with opium flowers, a crop that farmers were forced to grow by the British East India Company, often for no profit. The artist herself wears a costume combining traditional Bangladeshi and British elements. On the walls are images of tea bushes, applied with a mixture of sugar and tea. For Nupur, this is a reminder that the European custom of adding milk and sugar is an adulteration of Asian tea-drinking customs. While emphasising the comforting role of tea- drinking in Britain and South Asia, the work invites us to reflect on the impact of British imperialism and colonialism.
This work was developed through a residency at the Peabody Essex Museum in association with Dhaka Art Summit, and it was acquired for Tate’s collection in 2020 with funding provided by Tate’s South Asia Acquisitions Committee. It will remain on view at Tate Modern as an installation until autumn 2023.
Yasmin Jahan Nupur is taking part in a free all-day conference entitled Fugitive Forms: Performance in South Asia taking place in the Starr Cinema at Tate Modern on 22 Oct 2022. The event explores the history of performance art and its relationship to forms of protest across South Asia.
Research supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor.
