LONDON — The emerging British Nepalese actor Amita Suman, best known for her appearance in the Netflix hit series “Shadow and Bone,” will present a selection of her favorite pieces from Sotheby’s next offering of contemporary art.
A concurrent exhibition spotlighting key pieces from the auction from the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Banksy, Damien Hirst and George Condo will run from Wednesday to April 18 in London on New Bond Street.
Born in Nepal, Suman moved to Brighton at the age of 7 with her family and has talked candidly about her multicultural upbringing and media representation during her promotion for “Shadow and Bone,” as well as her previous Coco Crush jewelry ambassadorship for Chanel. But it’s little known that she has a deep interest in visual arts.
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“I think I don’t talk about it as much probably because I don’t get asked those questions in interviews,” said Suman during a Zoom call.
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“They want to know the current work that I’m doing. But visual arts, it’s such an integral part of my life. We are all affected by it at a very young age. Even as babies, the first thing we see is the two colors of black and white and how that develops and our sensory experience with that,” she said.
Growing up in Brighton, the vibrant street art scene inspired her to be creative and free.
“Brighton is a hub for creativity. The street art over there is just phenomenal. It’s really raw and celebrates so many icons that are part of Brighton. We have a few Banksy works, and there’s a wall mural at the Prince Albert pub, and that celebrates all the iconic musicians of the 20th century,” said Suman, who is in the middle of a media tour as the second season of “Shadow and Bone,” which was based on Leigh Bardugo’s best-selling fantasy novels “Shadow and Bone” and “Six of Crows,” was released mid-March.
Visual arts also influence her career as an actor. Her most recent experience with art was at Musée d’Orsay in Paris last month. She was mesmerized by paintings from Odilon Redon, which forms part of the exhibition “Pastels from Millet to Redon,” running till July.
“It’s highly stimulating for me. Sometimes when I’m doing my script work instead of writing words down, I either use symbols or pictures or paintings or whatever I’m inspired by because that can give such a story within such a small space of time,” said Suman. “And I think it’s one of the most integral parts of life with culture, with inspiration, and with bringing people together with also expressing one’s individuality within their work.”
For the role of Inej Ghafa in the Netflix series, an expert knifeman, Suman received intense training so that she can deliver believable fight scenes alongside her costars, who include Jessie Mei Li, Archie Renaux, and Freddy Carter.
“I went through a lot of training for season two because it’s been two years since last season. My favorite work is tumbling and practicing all the different knives and the butterfly knife, driving myself insane with as many YouTube tutorials as I can possibly watch,” she recalled.
For her selection for the upcoming auction, which will be the first annual edition of Contemporary Curated in London following the success of the previous record-breaking sales, Suman picked 11 pieces of work from Andy Warhol, Secundino Hernández, Adrian Ghenie, Robert Longo, Tom Wesselmann, Flora Yukhnovich, Danica Lundy, Banksy, and Condo.
Suman said her key criterion was whether the use of color can touch her.
“I’ve always been fascinated by colors and expression. I’ve always enjoyed impressionistic art and abstract art. So I picked this really beautiful piece by Condo, and it kind of reminds me of how the obscurity of life is something we all experience and the power of that within the color red,” she said.
She was also impressed with Warhol’s work “Campbell’s Soup Box: Chicken Rice” as “this rich contrast in colors and his vision behind fast food and mass production and the symbolism of addiction. I think the colors are quite sickly and in a very symbolic way of how when you consume too much fast food you get that instant gratification but you get this weird sickly feeling in your stomach afterward.”
The actor named Banksy’s Exclamation Rat as a must-have because “I feel like I’ve grown up with Banksy and I feel like Banksy is an important part of Brighton’s history.”
Suman then went on to interpret the work of Hernández, a contemporary Spanish painter who is greatly influenced by gestural abstract painters like Cy Twombly and Joan Miró.
“It’s a really beautiful, demure abstract painting, but it reminds me more of the harshness of the current things that are going on and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that will take such a perspective,” she said.
“It’s these different gradients of severe black lines with pastel gray kind of splashes. I feel like the contrast of the two colors and the severity of the lines in this canvas in particular that kind of feel infinite. The lines speak past the canvas and feel like there’s some sort of war going on between the two things and I’m looking at the current day and age and all the political things that are going on and how there are always two oppositions in conflict, whether that’s to do with money, business, or culture,” Suman added.
Her former partnership with Chanel also enabled her to express her artistic nature beyond the screen, and the actor said she would love to participate in more art-related projects.
She added that she was impressed with everything she saw at the “Le Grand Numéro de Chanel” exhibition last December in Paris, from the history of the house to the meaning behind its iconographies such as the number 5, the lion and the camellia.
“I think Chanel really is celebrating art in every single form, whether it’s with film and TV, visual arts, dancers, singers, and everything. I am also really excited to go to the V&A exhibition that they’ve got coming up,” said Suman.
Looking ahead, the actor said she is “very excited for one particular project,” that’s waiting to be greenlighted, but can’t say anything more beyond that at the moment. She would like to dip her toes in indie films and big Hollywood franchises as well.
“I would love to eventually somehow get into Bond movies. I’ve never seen anyone with my background or who looks like me with my kind of story. I’m hoping if they do go down that route, they should definitely hit me up,” said Suman, adding that she is equally interested in bittersweet rom-coms like “The Notebook,” or a role like Lara Croft in “Tomb Raider.”
“I’m hoping one day someone’s going to read it and be like: ‘OK, I didn’t think of her. That’s brilliant,'” she added.