Shilpa Gupta is drawn to borderlines in the broadest sense of the word: from geographical and political frontiers to social divisions and the boundaries of the self. She is interested in human perception: the way we look at other people, how we see ourselves and how we define our identities.
In Shilpa Gupta’s art, the concept of the border is extremely tensile. Her starting point is the place she lives, which is India, which experienced social and political upheavals in the 1990’s, at a time when globalization was setting in. At a time when the entire world is within reach and international travel has never been easier, we seem to be delineating our national borders ever more firmly. Shilpa Gupta questions today’s artificially constructed national frontiers, which are often far more recent than the cultures that exist within them. Her work is never simply political; she herself prefers to call it ‘everyday art’, since it is produced in direct response to her day-to-day observations.
The viewer plays an unmistakable role in Shilpa Gupta’s – often interactive – artworks. These are not so much an aesthetic expression of the artist’s own ideas as an attempt to engage the viewer in dialogue. The works exist by the grace of their audience, who draw on their own contexts, associations and memories to endow them with a constant flow of new meanings.
