AD : Shilpa Gupta's monograph in Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series is fiercely personal (by Radhika Iyengar)
The first South Asian artist to be profiled in Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series, Shilpa Gupta’s monograph nosedives into her riveting body of work.
Someone Else: A Library of 100 Books Written Anonymously or Under Pseudonyms (detail), 2011. S.S etched books, 190 x 488 x 22 cm. Artwork © Shilpa Gupta. Phaidon
One of the first things you learn while thumbing through ‘Shilpa Gupta: Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series’—a comprehensive monograph dedicated to the renowned artist’s 25-year-old practice—is how she had to doggedly elbow her place in the art world.
Shilpa Gupta, Haeinsa Temple, South Korea, 2021. Phaidon
This assertion of self, it seems, first began at home. The idea of pursuing a career as a woman, let alone becoming an artist, was considered incongruous and off-kilter in Gupta’s family. “I come from a family where few girls I have grown up with have had a career,” she relays in the book. “In fact, I’m the only one from my generation!”
In the past, Phaidon’s Contemporary Artist Series has profiled a constellation of heavy-weights such as Yayoi Kusama, Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown and Paul McCarthy. Each title offers an in-depth insight into the artwork produced by the world’s most remarkable minds, while providing a glimpse into their creative dispositions.
Gupta is the first South Asian among the stalwarts to be featured in the series’ 27-year-old history. The book charts Gupta’s evolution as an artist and underlines a spectrum of influences, curiosities and formative, life-altering experiences that have informed her work—like watching smoke from her terrace while homes and shops were set on fire during the Bombay 1992-93 riots, or miraculously missing a blast by a few feet in conflict-ridden Kashmir.
2D Bookshot. Phaidon
Augmented by a perceptive interview by scholar and curator, Alexandra Monroe, and interspersed a few essays and rich visuals from Gupta’s oeuvre, the monograph comes at a crucial time when countries are tumbling into a dark political climate, embracing religious dogmatism and adopting aggressive surveillance strategies.
Anyone familiar with Gupta’s multi-faceted repertoire is aware that she rigorously tackles themes of identity, language, movement and borders, censorship, human behaviour and gender; and deliberately makes art that pricks our conscience. For instance, in her early work, Blame (2002-04), she masqueraded as a hawker on public trains and offered small bottles filled with red liquid that simulated blood. It was in response to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. The bottles read: ‘Blaming You Makes Me Feel So Good. So I Blame You For What You Cannot Control, Your Religion, Your Nationality. I Want To Blame You…’ Two decades have passed since the riots and the project is resoundingly relevant even today.
Untitled, 2022. Video installation, 21 LED screens, 1744 x 144 cm, 13 min. 30 sec. loop, installation view at the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, 2022. Artwork © Shilpa Gupta. Roland Schmidt
One of her most powerful works is For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017-18), which was presented at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019—a career defining moment. It’s a haunting multilingual sound installation that plays the voices of a hundred poets—political dissidents—who have been ‘silenced’ across centuries by being imprisoned or executed. Its title found inspiration in the writings of a 14th century Azerbaijani poet, Imadaddin Nasimi. Once experienced, Gupta’s immersive sound art has the tendency to linger and settle in one’s memory.
A discerning artist, she is the kind who delves into extensive research before commencing a project. For instance, Gupta interviewed the revered linguist, and political activist Noam Chomsky, whose insights helped build the early scaffoldings of For in Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit. ‘In the interview [Chomsky] told me about a survey in which people in a conflict zone were interviewed. They said they wanted peace,’ Gupta explains in the monograph. ‘However, the few who speak the loudest tend to be assumed to speak for others. This led to the ninety-nine other voices who echo the lone poet in For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit’.
There Is No Border Here, 2005–06. Wall drawing with self-adhesive tapes, 300 x 300 cm. Artwork © Shilpa Gupta. Phaidon
Shilpa Gupta's monograph, an authoritative documentation of the artist’s oeuvre, is peppered with similar fascinating anecdotes, allowing art enthusiasts to understand the mind of a gifted artist whose work continues to be fierce and daringly original.
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