Drawing in the Dark

APRIL 29 – JULY 16, 2017

OPENING: FREITAG, APRIL 28, 7PM

Shilpa Gupta is considered as one of India’s most significant contemporary artists whose work is presented internationally. She works in a range of different media, among them video, photography, sculpture, performance and sound. Gupta investigates how people and their experiences are formed by places and objects, but also by processes of classification, limitation, censorship and security measures. Via this complex approach, her work opens up an emotional access to her viewers and an intensive dialogue with them.

For »Drawing in the Dark«, her first solo exhibition at a German institution , the artist has developed new works. The title refers to the clandestine movements and practices in Indo Bangladesh borderlands, and to the metaphor of the line that links several of the works on display here. In late 2016 Gupta returned to parts around the 4000km long border fence that India is building, encircling its neighbor Bangladesh. The show is part of Gupta’s ongoing interest into interrelations between structures, specifically those of the state and the individual, and their rescaling as encountered, at what is both frontier and periphery.

Shilpa Gupta, born in 1976 in Mumbai (IND), lives and works there as well. In the recent years solo exhibitions were shown, among others, in the context of the 56th Venice Biennial (2015, with Rashid Rana), at the Kunstnemes Hus in Oslo (NO) (both 2014), at Galerie TaxiPalais in Innsbruck (AT, 2013) as well as at the Arnolfini in Bristol (UK, 2012) Furthermore she was represented by works in group exhibitions, among others, at the Kathmandu Triennial (2017), 12th Havana Biennial (CU), at the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art in Gothenburg (SE), at SALT in Istanbul (TR), at Queens Museum in New York (USA) (all 2015).

Curator: Thomas Thiel

The exhibition is a collaboration with KIOSK (Ghent, Belgium) and Centre d’Art Contemporain La Synagogue de Delme (Delme, France). To mark the exhibition, a 28-page brochure will be published (German/English).