Untitled (Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak)
2006
Photography, 305 x 183 cm, (4x) 102 x 64 cm.
Materials: 3 digital prints
Collection: Courtesy the artist.
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.
The Formation of Identity, Shilpa Gupta: Someone Else, Arnolfini, Bristol, In: Aesthetica Magazine, 11 April 2012
