Gillian Wearing’s portrait of Shami Chakrabarti, taken with a large-format camera, shows its sitter holding a wax mask of her own face. Wearing has said that the idea was inspired by Chakrabarti’s own comment about her “mask-like” public persona, often interpreted as “grim, worthy and strident”.
A barrister, and former director of the civil rights group Liberty, Chakrabarti is now a Labour Party politician, and a member of the House of Lords. In her frequent appearances on the BBC’s Question Time and Radio 4’s Today Programme, among others, she has been consistently passionate and committed in her defence of civil liberties, particularly in areas of anti-terrorism measures and immigration. More recently she has been at the heart of the complex debate surrounding the UK’s departure from Europe.
Laura Barton meets Chakrabarti in a park close to the House of Lords, where even on a dreary autumn morning demonstrators have gathered at the gates with placards.
This podcast is a collaboration between TOAST and the National Portrait Gallery. All views expressed are the subject's own, and not necessarily those of TOAST or the National Portrait Gallery.
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