Shilpa Gupta: Familiarize yourself with the nearest exit

Yvon Lambert - Paris is pleased to announce its first solo show of Shilpa Gupta (b 1976), entitled Familiarise Yourself with the Nearest Exit. Gupta is from Mumbai (born and lives), a city ripe with racial and religious diversity, factors that play key roles in her art. Gupta, thought of as one of the most talented young Indian artists, creates artwork using interactive video, photographs, objects, sound and public performances to examine such themes as desire, religion, the ʻpsychologyʼ of fear,and notions of security. Gupta has always been concerned with our vision of the world today, and uses interaction as a means to invite the viewer to participate in exploring this, such as in her work on show entitled ʻThreatʼ. In this sculpture piece, hundreds of pieces of soap have been embossed with the word ʻthreatʼ and viewers are invited to take a piece of soap home to be used. Over the years, several of Guptaʼs projects have touched on the border crisis between India and Pakistan, and the resulting loss of life in Kashmir. In the video installation ʻHardly bear to Speakʼ, on show currently, fours monitors show the portraits, which are vibrating, of the four judges who were appointed to determine the division of India and Pakistan. The relationships were so tendentious, however, that the judges “could hardly bear to speak to each other” which created deadlock. Guptaʼs empathy towards the situation in Kashmir is markedly evident in many of her pieces, however her approach to the subject of war is universal, and the viewer is often able to relate to her pieces in terms of all conflict in the world.

Shilpa Guptaʼs work travels easily across cultural borders and she has already shown at some of the most important biennales and trienniales in the world. Guptaʼs work is tenacious and thought provoking, as she permits the more dangerous contents of the mind, as well as private and collective fears, to take form as art. Shilpa Gupta is on display in September 2009 at the Lyon Biennale, the Essl Museum, Austria in the exhibition Chalo! India, and at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in the exhibition The World is Yours.

Recent Biennales include Gwangju Biennale, Korea and the Yokohama International Triennale, Japan.

Recent exhibitions of Shilpa Gupta include the solo exhibition While I Sleep, at le Laboratoire; Indian Highway exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York; MAC/VAL Museum of Contemporary Art, Val-de-Marne, France.

Shilpa Gupta
Familiarize yourself with the nearest exit