Currently on view: Montréal
Shilpa Gupta: Will we ever be able to mark enough?
at Darling Foundry
5 October – 4 December 2011 (extended)
Curator: Renée Baert
Shilpa Gupta “Will we ever be able to mark enough?” Installation view at Darling Foundry 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Darling Foundry. Photo credit: Guy L’Heureux
In a rapidly globalizing world, intensified human migrations have brought issues of identity, culture and homeland to the forefront of many’s political agenda, and with them the fears and insecurities of change. Shilpa Gupta’s exhibition Will we ever be able to mark enough? at Darling Foundry sharply addresses some of our most recurrent anxieties for the issues above, particularly regarding border security. The Mumbai artist worked in collaboration with Montreal curator Renée Baert to present her first Canadian solo show, a selection of recent pieces as well as pivotal new works, created specifically for this show.
Unfortunately unavailable to personally set up the exhibition, the artist however did invest much fervor in her selection of signature works. Before even entering the exhibition, a row of six color photographs greet us, hanging on a brick wall across the street from the Foundry. All one and a half meters in diameter, each square image captures the upper body movements of dark skinned figures, arms flailing and faces blurred by slow shutter photo effects. In stepping outside the institutional space of the gallery, Gupta continues her ongoing practice of confronting her images in public settings, usually reserved for advertising purposes. As opposed to the latter’s focus on instantaneous communications, Gupta draws a more complex worldview.
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