Altered Inheritances – 100 (Last Name) Stories
2012-2014
Installation, Variable dimensions.
Materials: Pigmented inktjet prints in split wood frames
Collection: Courtesy The Prabhakar Collection.
Collective memory is [...] addressed in Gupta’s Altered Inheritances – 100 (Last Name) Stories (2014), an installation comprising a series of framed photographs spliced in half, shuffled, and then reinstalled along the line of split, which runs continuously around the room. This set of images is syncopated and wildly associative, ranging from historical photographs to snapshots and scans of abstract drawings. Short texts accompanying the images tell of people who abandoned their last names after migrating to a new place. The abstract geometry of the line again acts as both a divider and a connector, framing a particular kind of alienation as a condition of possibility for identification and belonging.
Moalemi (M.)., Shilpa Gupta and Zarina’s “Altered Inheritances: Home is a Foreign Place”, In: Art Agenda Review, 2019
