Text by Regina Papachlimitzou
In her first major solo exhibition in the UK, Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta uses an eclectic variety of media to explore some of the themes most central to her work: namely, censorship, the particularities of text and script as tools of communication, and individuality versus collective experience to name but a few.
The exhibition is titled Someone
Else, after the work showcased in the first floor gallery. The installation
comprises roughly a hundred metal cases in the shapes and sizes of various
books published under a pseudonym, with an etching of the first edition cover,
on which is added the writer’s reason for not publishing under their own name.
The reasons are not surprising in and of themselves (‘fear of disrepute’ and
‘fear of disapproval’ are encountered in various guises, including but not
limited to parental, societal, or professional). What is surprising, however, is how diverse the permutations of said
reasons are, and the similarity of factors influencing the decision to opt for
a pseudonym across the borders of gender, history, or socio-political
circumstances. The cases are empty, the exhibition guide informs us, ‘to
signify the absence of the author’s real identity’.
And yet, the work does not seem to be correlating the use of
pseudonym with the absence of ‘real’ identity, but seems rather more concerned
with exposing the fact that a name is as arbitrarily connected to a work as
language itself is to the world it purports to express and signify. Someone Else suggests that, whatever the
name on a cover a book, the writer him-/herself will be judged according to the
book’s content: the pseudonym may act as a temporary buffer, but it is the work
that eventually will be the author’s legacy, and the measure of his or her ‘true’
identity. The question ‘Who was the ‘real’ Eric Arthur Blair?’ is not nearly as
significant as the question ‘How correct was the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four in his vision of a future dystopia, which is
our present reality?’ –and, by extension, where is this author situated in the
current socio-cultural landscape?
In the main gallery of the second floor, Singing Cloud moves away from the
examination of identity and individualism towards a more collectively
formulated experience. Made up of 4,000 microphones that have had their
function inversed, so as to emit rather than record sound, the work pulsates
and sings in a variety of voices and sounds, ranging from the beating of bird
wings to snoring, to a chanting chorus of women, to the sound of a lonely piano
key being hit again and again. The sounds are gathered up in the same way moisture
is gathered in a cloud, eventually reaching a crescendo that reverberates
through the work which then falls momentarily silent –in much the same way as a
raincloud would reach saturation point and subsequently dissolve into rain. Singing Cloud acts as the embodied
metaphor of the overarching experience of human life, transcending the
boundaries of time and place and gathering disparate elements together in a
harmonious whole.
The two works showcased in the smaller space adjacent to the
main gallery simultaneously bring together and juxtapose the concepts of
individuality and voicelessness, community and discord. Untitled is a series of photographs in which the artist, donning
combat trousers, khaki t-shirt, and military cap, poses in turn with her hands over her eyes, ears or
mouth; another pair of hands (belonging to an invisible person behind her)
furthers the isolation by covering the artist’s ears when her own hands cover
her eyes and so forth. A sinister dimension of the theme of ‘see no evil, hear
no evil, speak no evil’ is thus exposed:
you’re hardly ever on your own when making the decision to look away, to
keep quiet. More often than not, as Untitled
shows, there is someone else there, pulling the wool over your eyes and making
sure your ears will stay shut to the world around you, someone who puts their
hands over your mouth if you even think about screaming to wake everyone around
you up.
There is No Border Here
is a work made of pieces of narrow yellow tape, on which the words THERE IS NO
BORDER HERE repeatedly appear, stuck together in the shape of a flag. The
stripes of the flag bear lettering, a poem narrating the futile attempts to
divide the sky, ‘one [half] for my lover and one / For me’. The attempts are
futile because the clouds will stubbornly resist such divisions, passing from
one side to another and back again, refusing to be pushed or kept away,
ignoring the sofas, trenches, and other ludicrous measures of the speaker.
Perhaps a haunting reference to the Partition of India and the subsequent
exchanges of population and ensuing disputes, the work equally acts as a signifier for any conflict brought about and enforced
by division. Denouncing as it does the absurdity of manufactured boundaries, (examples
of which abound in contemporary society), There
is No Border Here is a wistful hope and a stern reminder of the duty all
peoples have to resist letting walls come between human beings.
Someone Else offers a wonderfully articulate study of the inevitable interdependence between the individual and society, between the enforcement (or elimination) of boundaries and the formation of identity.
Shilpa Gupta:
Someone Else, 03/03/2012 - 22/04/2012, Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol, BS1 4QA.
www.arnolfini.org.ukCaption:
Shilpa Gupta
Someone Else
Steel Etched Books and Shelves2010-11
Installation shot, Arnolfini 2012
Image copyright: Jamie Woodley
