M HKA Ensembles

M HKA, Antwerp

Shilpa Gupta

Shilpa Gupta possesses a sharp political awareness of politics, psychology, behaviour and language, being particularly conscious of their complicity in the production of fear. She creates artworks with distinct poetics that offer reflections on themes such as human relationships, desire, conflict, security, technology, borders and censorship. Her work is multi-faceted and often participatory, typically utilising media such as sculpture, installation, text and photography. Gupta is one of the established artists of the Mumbai contemporary art scene to have emerged since the 1990s, the generation that became established internationally. From the outset, her work has been characterised by its experimentation, in contrast to the traditional practices such as painting that have remained prevalent in India. Though her works could be interpreted as referring to the social or political situation of specific cultural or national contexts, Gupta keeps them decidedly open, allowing their themes to be interpreted differently wherever and whenever they are exhibited.

In 2014, Gupta participated in the exhibition Don’t You Know Who I Am – Art After Identity Politics, which was an important research exhibition held at M HKA that defined a new reading of contemporary art, considering questions of human diversity in relation to new aesthetic and philosophical dimensions. Her first ever mid-career overview exhibition, Today Will End, was held at M HKA in 2021.

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